Around 9:00 p.m., major league baseball scout Larry Wild is pumping gas for himself at Cardie’s Corner, a Herington, Kansas, gas station and convenience store. Wild, a Herington native, will tell investigators that he sees Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, April 13, 1995, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) and an unidentified man standing near one another inside the store. He does not recognize either man. He will say he does not see them leave; investigators will note that the house of McVeigh’s fellow conspirator Terry Nichols (see (February 20, 1995) and (6:00 p.m.) April 17, 1995) is only a few blocks away. Wild will say that the unidentified man fits the general appearance of the “John Doe No. 2” sketch (see April 15, 1995 and 3:00 p.m. April 17, 1995), though it is not an identical resemblance. Wild will describe the man as shorter and stockier than McVeigh, with dark, brushed-back hair and a dark complexion. He speculates the man may be Hispanic, Native American, or both. The man wears a light-blue denim jacket, Wild will recall. [New York Times, 12/3/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]

Two men enter a hair salon, Gracie & Company, in Junction City, Kansas, for a haircut. The men will later be identified as “John Doe No. 1” and “John Doe No. 2,” suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 20, 1995). Salon owner Kathy Henderson will identify the two to the FBI, and later to the press. One man, “No. 2,” with brown hair and a square jaw, asks for a haircut for both himself and his friend. The other, “No. 1” (later identified as Timothy McVeigh, who will detonate the bomb), has light skin and a crewcut. Henderson will identify the two after seeing the sketches released by the FBI. Henderson turns the two away because, as she will recall, the salon was “all booked up.” She will recall of “No. 2”: “It was strange. He did not need a haircut. He was very well groomed.” In subsequent interviews, Junction City residents will recall seeing McVeigh in several places over the last few weeks, usually in the company of his unidentified friend (see April 15, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995, and 8:00 a.m. April 18, 1995). [New York Times, 4/22/1995] This witness identification clashes with the chain of events as laid out by McVeigh and the FBI (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995 and Noon and After, April 18, 1995).

David King, staying at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, later tells investigators that around 3:30 a.m. he is drinking beer and watching movies with a friend when he hears a noise. He looks out of his motel room window and sees a man he later identifies as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) sitting in the passenger seat of a large Ryder truck (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995). According to King, the dome light is on, the glove compartment is open, and McVeigh is poring over a map. King leaves the motel just before dawn and sees McVeigh still sitting in the Ryder truck. When King returns between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m., he notices that the truck is gone. Federal investigators later determine that McVeigh leaves the motel for good sometime before 5:00 a.m. McVeigh will later tell his lawyers that he wakes up around 4:00 a.m. and leaves the motel around 5:00 a.m., but does not sit in the truck as King says. [New York Times, 4/30/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] King saw McVeigh at the motel the day before (see 3:00 p.m. April 17, 1995). Another witness, motel owner Lea McGown, will say that she wakes up around 4:00 a.m. and sees McVeigh in the driver’s seat of the Ryder truck (not the passenger seat as King alleges). The dome light is on, she will recall, and McVeigh is hunched over as if he is studying a map. By 5:00 a.m., she will recall, the truck is gone. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 150]

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) leaves the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas (see 3:30 a.m. April 18, 1995), and drives his rented Ryder truck (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995) to Herington, Kansas, where he has planned to meet with his co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see (February 20, 1995)) at 6:00 a.m. The plan is for McVeigh and Nichols to meet in the parking lot of the Pizza Hut near the storage unit where they have stored materials for the bomb (see September 22, 1994), leave Nichols’s truck at the Pizza Hut, and ride in the truck to the storage shed. Nichols, who has told McVeigh he does not want to participate directly in the bombing (see March 1995 and March 31 - April 12, 1995), does not appear. Nichols will later tell FBI investigators that around 6:00 a.m., McVeigh calls him asking to borrow his pickup truck to pick up some items and look at vehicles, and asking him to pick up McVeigh on his way to an auction in Fort Riley, Kansas (see November 20-21, 1997). At 6:15 a.m., McVeigh begins loading the truck himself, first loading empty drums and then beginning to load the seven boxes of fuel-oil gel. At 6:30 a.m., Nichols arrives in his truck. McVeigh has already loaded 20 50-pound bags of fertilizer into the truck. Nichols wants to leave and wait until sunrise to finish loading the truck, but McVeigh refuses. Nichols drives his truck to the Pizza Hut and walks back to the shed. Nichols then helps McVeigh load another 70 bags of fertilizer and three 55-gallon drums of nitromethane. McVeigh and Nichols leave in the shed a Ruger Mini 30 rifle, a duffel bag, LBE rifles and extra magazines for the guns, a smoke grenade, a hand grenade, a CS gas grenade, a shortwave radio, three KinePal explosive sticks similar to dynamite sticks, two changes of McVeigh’s clothing, three license plates, and a shovel. McVeigh tells Nichols, “If I don’t come back for a while, you’ll clean out the storage shed.” Nichols and McVeigh drive to Geary Lake State Park, Nichols in his pickup truck, McVeigh in the Ryder. [New York Times, 4/26/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 150; Douglas O. Linder, 2001]Nichols Tells Different Story - Nichols will later describe to investigators (see April 25, 1995) a somewhat different chain of events. According to Nichols, McVeigh calls him at 6 a.m. and asks him to come to Junction City; according to Nichols’s statement, he drives to Fort Riley, where he intends to spend most of the day at an auction (see November 20-21, 1997), and lets McVeigh have the truck. Nichols will say that McVeigh returns the truck later this afternoon and the two drive to a storage shed, where McVeigh instructs Nichols to clean out the shed if he does not “come back in a while.” [New York Times, 4/26/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]Witnesses See McVeigh in Junction City, McVeigh Will Say Witnesses Are Mistaken - Two witnesses will later say they see McVeigh and another, unidentified man park a Ryder truck in front of a Hardee’s restaurant in Junction City sometime during the morning, but McVeigh will later tell his lawyers that this does not occur. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]

Two witnesses see whom they believe to be Oklahoma City bombing suspects Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see September 13, 1994, October 20, 1994, (February 20, 1995), and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) at a diner in Herington, Kansas. Barbara Whittenberg and her husband Robert own the Santa Fe Trail diner in Herington; the restaurant is near Highway 77, which leads to Junction City (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). Early in the morning, Barbara Whittenberg sees McVeigh, Nichols, and a third man she does not recognize eating together in her restaurant. They have three separate vehicles in the parking lot—a white car with an Arizona license plate (see April 13, 1995), a Ryder truck (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995 and 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995), and a pickup truck, presumably the truck owned by Nichols. Whittenberg’s son Charlie notices the car’s Arizona license plate and strikes up a conversation with the three, a conversation that Barbara Whittenberg joins. Whittenberg recognizes Nichols as an occasional patron, and recognizes McVeigh from a single visit he made sometime earlier. The third man has a dark complexion, she will later tell investigators, and looks Hawaiian. She will say that the third man bears a general resemblance to the sketch of “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995), but his face is thinner, his cheekbones more prominent, and his nose wider than what the sketch depicts. During their brief conversation, she asks where they are going, and the third man replies, “Oklahoma.” She replies that she has relatives in a town south of Oklahoma City; the remark, she will recall, stops the conversation. “It was like ice water was thrown on it,” she later says. The men stay for about an hour, she will recall, and leave around 9:00 a.m. After 2:00 p.m., she and her husband drive to Junction City, she will recall, going past the entrance to Geary State Fishing Lake, the site where the FBI will later say Nichols and McVeigh assemble the bomb. The Whittenbergs see a Ryder truck parked by the lake and think of the three men. The truck appears identical to the one they had at the diner. “They couldn’t find a place to stay,” she will remember saying. According to chronologies assembled by the FBI and McVeigh’s lawyers, the two have left the lake before 2:00 (see 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). [New York Times, 12/3/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]

A remote, yet accessible area of Geary State Lake Park. [Source: Leisure and Sports Review (.com)]Oklahoma City bombing conspirators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, having finished loading McVeigh’s rented Ryder truck with the bomb components (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995), arrive at Geary State Lake Park, Kansas, where they begin assembling the bomb. (A diner owner will later say she sees McVeigh, Nichols, and a third man eating breakfast at her establishment between 8 and 9 a.m.—see 8:00 a.m. April 18, 1995. It is possible that the 8:15 a.m. time of arrival is slightly erroneous.) Each 55-gallon drum has the contents of seven 50-pound bags of fertilizer and seven 20-pound buckets of nitromethane. They use a bathroom scale to weigh the buckets of nitromethane. They slit open the bags of ammonium nitrate, pour the fuel into empty plastic barrels, and mix in the racing fuel, turning the white fertilizer pellets into bright pink balls. After 10 minutes or so, the components will blend sufficiently to cause a tremendous explosion if detonated by blasting caps and dynamite, which they wrap around the barrels. McVeigh runs the main fuse to the entire batch through a hole in the storage compartment into the cab of the truck, allowing him to light the fuse from inside the cab. When they finish, Nichols nails down the barrels and McVeigh changes clothes, giving his dirty clothes to Nichols for disposal. Nichols also takes the 90 empty bags of fertilizer. The rest of the “tools” are placed in the cone of the bomb. They finish sometime around noon. Nichols tells McVeigh that his wife Marife (see July - December 1990) is leaving him for good. Nichols says he will leave McVeigh some money and a telephone card in the Herington storage shed (see September 22, 1994). They shake hands and Nichols wishes McVeigh good luck. Before they drive off in their separate vehicles, Nichols warns McVeigh that the truck is leaking. As they drive away, McVeigh sees two trucks pulling in. [New York Times, 4/26/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 150-151; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] Nichols will drive from the lake to a military surplus auction at Fort Riley, Kansas. He then picks up address labels and business cards for his new surplus-reselling business (see April 6, 1995). McVeigh will drive back to the Dreamland Motel to check out, and head towards Oklahoma City (see Noon and After, April 18, 1995). [Serrano, 1998, pp. 151] Witnesses will later tell FBI investigators that around 9:00 a.m. they see a large Ryder truck parked next to a blue or brown pickup truck at the lake. Around 10:00 a.m., Sergeant Richard Wahl of Fort Riley and his son arrive at Geary Lake about 50 yards away from where McVeigh and Nichols are mixing the bomb. As the morning is cold and rainy, they wait for about an hour trying to decide whether or not to put their boat in the water. Wahl sees the Ryder truck and the blue pickup parked together near the boat ramp, though he cannot see anyone near the two vehicles. He will recall seeing the side door on the Ryder open and later seeing it closed. Other visitors to the park say they did not see any large yellow truck, and some will claim to have seen the truck at the park a week before, adding to the confusion surrounding the circumstances. Investigators will later find an oily substance which smells like fuel oil at the spot indicated by witnesses that the trucks were parked (see April 15-16, 1995). [New York Times, 5/12/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 150-151]

A surveillance camera south of Wichita, Kansas, films a Ryder truck with two men inside and two other men in a dark pickup following closely behind. Some believe the Ryder truck is driven by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), accompanied by unidentified accomplices. Witnesses say the two men in the Ryder truck stop for coffee sometime in the early morning hours at Jackie’s Farmers Store in Mulhall, Oklahoma, off of Highway 35, about an hour north of Oklahoma City. Witnesses will later say that Mulhall postmaster Mary Hunnicutt is in the store and stands next to McVeigh. Hunnicutt will later tell reporters that she has been advised by the FBI not to discuss her experience, because she may be called upon to testify. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] These sightings do not coincide with McVeigh’s own chronology of events (see Noon and After, April 18, 1995).

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) wakes up near Ponca City, Oklahoma (see Noon and After, April 18, 1995), and at about 7:00 a.m. begins driving toward Oklahoma City in a rented Ryder truck (see April 15, 1995) containing a massive fertilizer bomb (see 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). McVeigh will later tell authors Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, who will write his authorized biography American Terrorist, that he has cold spaghetti for breakfast. “Meals ready to eat… are meant for high intensity. I knew I was going through a firestorm and I would need the energy,” he will say. He will tell the authors that he made an “executive decision” to move up the timing of the blast several hours; he will also tell them that he drives to Oklahoma City alone. He wears a T-shirt with a drawing of Abraham Lincoln in a “Wanted” poster and the words (shouted by John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin) “SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS” (“thus ever to tyrants”); the shirt also features the Thomas Jefferson quote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” and a picture of a tree dripping with blood. McVeigh takes Interstate 35 to Interstate 40 to Interstate 235, and takes the Harrison/Fourth Street exit. According to Mike Moroz, a service manager at Jerry’s Tire in downtown Oklahoma City, two men in a large Ryder truck stop between 8:25 a.m. and 8:35 a.m. to ask directions to Fifth and Harvey Streets, the location of the Murrah Building. Moroz will later identify the two men as McVeigh and an as-yet unidentified man, shorter, darker-skinned, and wearing a baseball cap; he later tells a USA Today reporter that McVeigh gets out of the driver’s side of the cab and walks over to speak with him, while the other man remains in the cab. Moroz’s version of events will remain unverified. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Denver Post, 6/3/1997; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Douglas O. Linder, 2006] Three witnesses later say they see McVeigh near the Murrah Building around 8:40 a.m. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]Alternate Versions of Events - An alternate version of events has McVeigh traveling to Oklahoma City with white supremacist Michael Brescia (see (April 1) - April 18, 1995 and April 8, 1995) in the passenger seat, which would explain why Moroz sees McVeigh and another man with him. And another version of events is later given by Ed Kirkpatrick, a local structural engineer, who will claim to see McVeigh and “a white guy” in his thirties or forties meeting a Middle Eastern man at a downtown McDonald’s around 8:30 a.m. According to Kirkpatrick, McVeigh sends the white man for coffee while he talks to the Middle Eastern man sitting in a Dodge Dynasty with a blue tag. The white man becomes upset, Kirkpatrick will say, and McVeigh leaves him at the McDonald’s. Kirkpatrick says he witnesses the white man throw a .45 handgun into a nearby dumpster. Yet another version of events will be provided by an unnamed mortgage company employee, who says he sees the Ryder truck being followed by a yellow Mercury at Main and Broadway; the employee will claim he sees McVeigh driving the Mercury. This version of events is echoed by a statement given by lawyer James R. Linehan, who will say that he sees McVeigh driving erratically in a battered yellow 1977 Mercury that matches the description of McVeigh’s getaway car (see April 13, 1995), first spotting the Mercury stopped beside him at a red light on the south side of the Murrah Building. He will describe the driver as hunched over the wheel and with his face obscured, either by a hood or by hair (McVeigh’s hair is close-cropped and McVeigh is not wearing a hooded pullover). No one is in the car with him, Linehan will say. The Mercury suddenly “peels out” and runs the red light, Linehan will say, then circles the building, drives around the Murrah Building, and then drives into its underground building. Linehan will remember the car as having no rear license plate. Before the car disappears into the underground parking garage, Linehan gets a better look at the driver, and Linehan will say he has a sharp nose, no facial hair, a sharp chin, and smooth features. Linehan will say that when he sees news footage of McVeigh’s yellow Mercury on television, he leaps to his feet, points at the TV screen, and yells: “That’s the car! That’s the car!” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 251; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Douglas O. Linder, 2006] Linehan’s version of events will be reported by Los Angeles Times reporter Richard A. Serrano in an August 1995 story. Linehan will be interviewed by the FBI, but will not testify before the grand jury investigating the bombing. He will also be interviewed by lawyers representing McVeigh. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 251-252]

The Alfred P. Murrah Building after being bombed. [Source: CBS News]A truck bomb destroys the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people in America’s worst domestic terrorist attack. Timothy McVeigh, later convicted in the bombing, has ideological roots both in the Patriot world and among neo-Nazis like William Pierce, whose novel, The Turner Diaries (see 1978), served as a blueprint for the attack. [Washington Post, 4/20/1995; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001; Clarke, 2004, pp. 127] Initially, many believe that no American set off the bomb, and suspect Islamist terrorists of actually carrying out the bombing (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After). Their suspicions prove groundless. Investigators will find that the bomb is constructed of some 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, carried in 20 or so blue plastic 55-gallon barrels arranged inside a rented Ryder truck (see April 15, 1995). The bomb is detonated by a slow-burning safety fuse, most likely lit by hand. The fuse is attached to a much faster-burning detonation cord (“det cord”) which ignites the fertilizer and fuel-oil mixture. [New York Times, 4/27/1995] The Murrah Federal Building houses a number of federal agencies, including offices for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF); the Social Security Administration; the Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Veterans Affairs, and Agriculture departments; and the Secret Service. [Washington Post, 4/20/1995] It encompasses an entire city block, between 5th and 4th Streets and Harvey and Robinson Streets, and features a U-shaped, indented drive on 5th that allows for quick pickup and delivery parking. The entire building’s facade on this side is made of glass, allowing passersby to see into the offices in the building, as well as into the America’s Kids day care center on the second floor, which by this time is filling with children. It is in this driveway that McVeigh parks his truck. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 99-102]Entering the City - McVeigh drives into Oklahoma City, entering around 8:30 a.m. from his overnight stop in Ponca City, Oklahoma; the details reported of his entrance into the city vary (see 7:00 a.m. - 8:35 a.m., April 19, 1995). At 8:55 a.m., a security camera captures the Ryder truck as it heads towards downtown Oklahoma City [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] , a sighting bolstered by three people leaving the building who later say they saw the truck parked in front of the Murrah Building around this time. At 8:57, a security camera captures an image of McVeigh’s Ryder truck being parked outside the Murrah Building in a handicapped zone. One survivor of the blast, Marine recruiter Michael Norfleet, later recalls seeing the Ryder truck parked just outside the building next to the little circle drive on 5th Street leading up to the main entrance of the building. Norfleet had parked his black Ford Ranger in front of the Ryder. McVeigh Lights Fuses - McVeigh drives the Ryder truck west past the Murrah Building on NW Fourth Street, turns north on a one-way street, and turns right on Fifth Street. He pulls the truck over and parks near the Firestone store, next to a chain-link fence. He then lights the five-minute fuses from inside the cab (see 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995), sets the parking brake, drops the key behind the seat, opens the door, locks the truck, exits, and shuts the door behind him. A man later claims to have hit his brakes to avoid someone matching McVeigh’s description as he crossed Fifth Street around 9:00 a.m. McVeigh walks quickly toward a nearby YMCA building where he has hidden his getaway car, a battered yellow Mercury Marquis (see April 13, 1995), in the adjoining alleyway, crossing Robinson Street and crossing another street to get to the alleyway. He begins to jog as he approaches his car. He later says he remembers a woman looking at him as she is walking down the steps to enter the building; he will describe her as white, in her mid-30s, with dirty blonde hair. According to McVeigh’s own recollection, he is about 20 feet into the alley when the bomb goes off. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 184-185; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 158; Douglas O. Linder, 2006; The Oklahoman, 4/2009]Truck Explodes - At 9:02 a.m., the truck explodes, destroying most of the Murrah Building and seriously damaging many nearby buildings. Eventually, it will be determined that 168 people die in the blast, including 19 children. Over 500 are injured. The children are in the second-story day care center just above the parking space where McVeigh leaves the Ryder truck. McVeigh will later tell his biographers that he is lifted off his feet by the power of the blast. Devastation and Death - When the bomb detonates, the day care center and the children plummet into the basement. The building, constructed with large glass windows, collapses, sending a wave of flying glass shards and debris into the building and the surrounding area. The oldest victim is 73-year-old Charles Hurlbert, who has come to the Social Security office on the first floor. Hurlbert’s wife Jean, 67, also dies in the blast. The youngest victim is four-month-old Gabeon Bruce, whose mother is also in the Social Security office. One victim, Rebecca Anderson, is a nurse who runs towards the building to render assistance. She never makes it to the building; she is struck in the head by a piece of falling debris and will die in a hospital four days after the blast. Her heart and kidneys will be transplanted into survivors of the bombing. [Denver Post, 6/3/1997; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 153-154; Oklahoma City Journal Record, 3/29/2001] Sherri Sparks, who has friends still unaccounted for in the building, tells a reporter in the hours after the blast, “Oh, I can’t stand the thought of… those innocent children, sitting there playing, thinking they’re safe, and then this happens.” The explosion leaves a 30-foot-wide, 8-foot-deep crater in the street that is covered by the wreckage of the building’s upper floors. The north face of the nine-story building collapses entirely. [Washington Post, 4/20/1995; Washington Post, 4/22/1995] Mary Heath, a psychologist who works about 20 blocks from the Murrah Building, says the blast “shook the daylights out of things—it scared us to death. We felt the windows shake before we heard the noise.” In a neighboring building, a Water Resources Board meeting is just commencing; the audiotape of the meeting captures the sound of the blast (see 9:02 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995). [Washington Post, 4/20/1995; The Oklahoman, 4/2009] Norfleet, trapped in the Marine Corps office, is thrown into a wall by the explosion. His skull is fractured, and a shard of glass punctures his right eye. Three separate arteries are pierced, and Norfleet begins bleeding heavily. Two supply sergeants in the office are far less injured; Norfleet asks one, “How bad am I hurt?” and one replies, “Sir, you look really bad.” One of the two begins giving Norfleet first aid; Norfleet later recalls: “He immediately went into combat mode and started taking care of me. He laid me on a table and he started looking for bandages to administer first aid. And while I was laying on that table, I just knew that I was losing strength and that if I stayed in the building, I would die.” Norfleet wraps a shirt around his head and face to slow the bleeding, and the two sergeants help him to the stairs, through the fallen rubble, and eventually out. Norfleet will later say that he follows “a blood trail of somebody that had gone down the steps before me” to get outside, where he is quickly put into an ambulance. He loses almost half his body’s blood supply and his right eye. He will never fly again, and will soon be discharged for medical incapacity. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 161-162] Eighteen-month-old Phillip Allen, called “P.J.” by his parents, miraculously survives the blast. The floor gives way beneath him and he plunges 18 feet to land on the stomach of an adult worker on the floor below, Calvin Johnson. Landing on Johnson’s stomach saves P.J.‘s life. Johnson is knocked unconscious by the blast and by the impact of the little boy falling on him, but when he awakes, he carries the toddler to safety. P.J.‘s grandfather calls the child “Oklahoma’s miracle kid,” and media reports use the label when retelling the story of the miraculous rescue. P.J. is one of six children in the day care center to survive the blast. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 275-277] Some people later report their belief that the Murrah Building was rocked by a second explosion just moments after the first one, the second coming from a secure area managed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) that illegally stored explosives. Law professor Douglas O. Linder will later write, “Both seismic evidence and witness testimony supports the ‘two blast theory.’” [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] That theory is later disputed (see After 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Explosion's Effects Felt Miles Away - Buildings near the Murrah are also damaged, seven severely, including the Journal Record newspaper building, the offices of Southwestern Bell, the Water Resources Board, an Athenian restaurant, the YMCA, a post office building, and the Regency Tower Hotel. Two Water Resources Board employees and a restaurant worker are killed in the blast. The Journal Record building loses its roof. Assistant Fire Chief Jon Hansen later recalls, “The entire block looked like something out of war-torn Bosnia.” Every building within four blocks of the Murrah suffers some effects. A United Parcel Service truck 10 miles away has its windows shattered by the blast. Cars in parking lots around the area catch fire and burn. Millions of sheets of paper, and an innumerable number of glass shards, shower down for hundreds of feet around the building. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 28-30]Truck Axle Crushes Nearby Car - Richard Nichols (no relation to bomber Timothy McVeigh’s co-conspirator Terry Nichols), a maintenance worker standing with his wife a block and a half away from the Murrah Building, is spun around by the force of the blast. They throw open the back door of their car and begin taking their young nephew Chad Nichols out of the back seat, when Richard sees a large shaft of metal hurtling towards them. The “humongous object… spinning like a boomerang,” as Richard later describes it, hits the front of their Ford Festiva, smashing the windshield, crushing the front end, driving the rear end high into the air, and sending the entire car spinning backwards about 10 feet. Chad is not seriously injured. The metal shaft is the rear axle of the Ryder truck. Later, investigators determine that it weighs 250 pounds and was blown 575 feet from where the truck was parked. Governor Frank Keating (R-OK) points out the axle to reporters when he walks the scene a day or so later, causing some media outlets to incorrectly report that Keating “discovered” the axle. The scene will take investigators days to process for evidence. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 32; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 187-189]First Responders Begin Arriving - Within minutes, survivors begin evacuating the building, and first responders appear on the scene (see 9:02 a.m. - 10:35 a.m. April 19, 1995). McVeigh's Getaway - McVeigh flees the bomb site in his Mercury getaway car (see 9:02 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995), but is captured less than 90 minutes later (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995).

According to later press reports, Chevie Kehoe (see June 1997), a former Elohim City (see November 1994 and April 5, 1995) resident staying at a motel in Spokane, Washington, wakes early and demands that the motel lobby turn the television to CNN, saying that “something is going to happen and it’s going to wake people up.” The motel owner will later tell reporters that Kehoe becomes elated when the news of the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) is reported, shouting, “It’s about time!” It is possible that Kehoe may have had advance warning of the blast through his Elohim City connections (see (April 1) - April 18, 1995). [Douglas O. Linder, 2006]

A bloodied survivor is helped from the Murrah bomb site. [Source: The Oklahoman]Survivors of the Murrah Federal Building bomb blast in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) begin evacuating. By 9:30, a triage center has been established at the corner of 6th and Robinson Streets. By 10 a.m., 59 survivors have either been rescued from the blasted building or have emerged on their own. The next day, the Washington Post will report: “Workers staggered out of stairwells, blood dripping into their eyes. A woman moaned on the ground, part of her leg apparently missing from the blast. Employees at buildings blocks away reported being thrown from their chairs, windows were shattered, and residents who live 30 miles from downtown reported feeling the powerful vibrations of the blast. Everywhere around the city, people stood in stunned silence, not believing what they had just seen and heard, not comprehending how anyone could have done such a thing.” Physician Carl Spengler, who arrives at the scene a few minutes after the blast to render assistance, tells a reporter: “It’s like Beirut. Everything burning and flattened.” Hours after the explosion, Assistant Fire Chief John Hansen says rescue workers see “many more fatalities in the building that we are working around” while searching for survivors. The task of searching for survivors goes on throughout the day and into the night, interrupted by erroneous reports of a second bomb being spotted and the subsequent evacuation of the scene (see 10:28 a.m. April 19, 1995). An agent of the medical examiner’s office, Richard Dugger, says: “Tomorrow will be the really awful day when everyone starts to get the official notification. That’s going to be a horrible thing to watch.” By 10:15, blood drives for the injured have begun at nearby Tinker Air Force Base and the Oklahoma Blood Institute. At 10:34, a new triage center is established at the corner of NW 3rd Street and Harvey Street. By 10:35, the Department of Defense delivers bomb-sniffing dogs, surgeons, equipment, medivac aircraft, and body bags to the site. [Washington Post, 4/20/1995; The Oklahoman, 4/2009] One mother, Helena Garrett, whose child Tevin is in the Murrah day care facility, runs from the nearby Journal Record building to the devastated Murrah Building to rescue her son, but is not allowed in by police officers. She finds another way in and begins climbing a pile of rubble to get to the day care on the second floor, but a man pulls her back down to the ground, telling her it is not safe for her to try to get to the facility. A few minutes later, people begin bringing dead, dying, and injured children out. Garrett, who knows the children in the facility, helps comfort one dying boy, two-year-old Colton Smith, until he loses consciousness for the last time. Garrett watches, numb and stricken, as the rescuers begin lining the children up on white sheets one by one on the ground. She screams: “Please don’t lay our babies on the glass! We don’t want our babies on the glass!” and a man with a broom sweeps away much of the broken glass on the ground where the rescuers are placing the bodies of the children, crying as he sweeps. Garrett never sees her son alive again; he is not found until April 22. The officials of the funeral home caring for Tevin’s body will convince Garrett not to look at her son’s head, as he is terribly disfigured by a crushing head injury. Instead, she recalls, they will open the lower lid of the casket. She later recalls, “I kissed his feet and his I kissed his legs, and I couldn’t go up higher.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 166-168]

Water Resources Board members and others flee into the streets after the bombing. [Source: The Oklahoman]A Water Resources Board meeting is commencing in the water board building just north of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, on the northwest corner of 5th and Harvey. As always, the meeting is audiotaped. Cynthia Lou Klaver, a Water Resources Board attorney, is there to help mediate a dispute from Ardmore, Oklahoma, involving a farmer who wants to drain scarce groundwater to open his own bottled-water business, a plan disputed by a small number of his neighbors. “We were getting ready to open it [the arbitration] up around nine that morning,” Klaver will later recall. She brings the group together in a third-floor boardroom, turns on a small cassette tape recorder, and begins the meeting. She has just begun to describe how the meeting will proceed when a huge, devastating roar thunders through the entire building. Pieces of ceiling and office furniture come crashing down. The roar, the sound of the explosion that devastates the Murrah Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), is captured on the tape, as is Klaver’s voice. “Everybody get out… out!” she screams. “Watch the electricity lines. Watch the lines!… Out the back door. All the way to the right.… Let’s get out of here!” Klaver later remembers wondering if the entire building is going to collapse, and will recall the tremendous amount of falling debris and live electrical lines. She and recording secretary Connie Siegel Goober try to help some of the elderly people out of the room, but find that the door is blocked. They force open a back door and lead their charges out of the room into a hallway. Klaver is one of the last people out of the building. Soon she and others are in the street, dazed and coughing on the thick smoke hanging in the air. She sees a coworker, Mike Mathis, who is attempting to drive himself to the hospital with a deep cut on his forehead. Klaver drives him, using his pickup truck. After officials let her back into the building, she will retrieve the audiotape. It will become one of the key pieces of evidence in the trial of the bomber, Timothy McVeigh (see April 25, 1997). She will also find a clock that had stopped after being shaken off the wall; it reads 9:02. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 158-160; The Oklahoman, 4/2009]

Luke Franey, an explosives expert for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF, sometimes called the ATF), is on the ninth floor of the Murrah Federal Building when the bomb goes off (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Though he is an expert on explosives, he is unable to immediately identify the kind of explosion that rocks the building. He tries to extricate himself from the debris, and almost immediately comes across a small tape recorder in the rubble. He begins making dictated notes into the microphone, trying to preserve his impressions for history and for any possible prosecution that might be forthcoming. “It’s April 19,” he says, breathing hard. “I’m making this tape for evidence purposes.… I was sitting at a desk on the ATF office on the ninth floor talking about obtaining an arrest warrant.… During that conversation, a loud explosion occurred, blowing me from my desk across the hall into the opposite office. It took me a minute to figure out what happened. But once I regained my senses I heard people screaming for help. I looked. I got out of my office. The building is basically destroyed. The DEA office is gone. There’s a sheer dropoff outside of my office.… The building has been ripped apart and there’s a straight dropoff approximately nine floors straight down.” Franey continues his observations, which are punctuated by muffled screams and the noise of emergency sirens. He is unable to find any survivors. “I can’t get any verbal responses,” he says. “I’m just holding tight. I’m not hurt. A little bit disoriented, I guess.” He notes the phone lines are dead. “Hell, I don’t know what else to say. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.” Franey turns off the machine at 9:05 a.m., three minutes after the blast, and turns it on again around 9:20 a.m. “I want to put this down before I forget. Right after it detonated, I got up and looked out the part of the building that wasn’t there. I could see where the Greek restaurant across was gone and there was a huge orange-colored flame with black smoke. I don’t know if it was a natural gas explosion that did this. I have no idea. I don’t know whether it was a bomb or a gas explosion or whatever. I’m not sure. But hell, who knows, it might be important.” Franey finds a large evidence poster board and writes on the back, “ATF Trapped, 9th Floor,” and props it in a window jamb. He later escapes across an outside ledge that slopes at a 45-degree angle, and will testify at the trials of bombing conspirators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 160-161; Associated Press, 5/28/2001]

Charles Watts, an attorney sitting in a building near the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, feels and hears the explosion of the truck bomb that devastates the Murrah Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). A few seconds later, he hears what he believes might be a second explosion. In a later interview with the far-right Media Bypass magazine, Watts will say: “It was like two distinct happenings. We thought the [bankruptcy court] building we were in was the one being bombed, as I guess most people in downtown Oklahoma City did. The alarms immediately went off in the building. Never have I ever experienced anything like this. This was a huge, huge explosion.” Subsequent investigations show that Watts and fellow witnesses were incorrect in assuming they heard a second blast. Geological and explosives experts later determine that the “second explosion” was caused by the huge roar and shock wave of the upper floors of the Murrah Building smashing down upon themselves, “pancaking” one atop another. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 26-27] The US Geological Survey in Oklahoma recorded two major events 11.9 seconds apart at the time of the bombing. Oklahoma chief geophysicist James Lawson later explains that the second “tremor” was the building collapsing, not a second bomb. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 266] Reporter and author Brandon W. Stickney later writes: “When a car bomb is used on a building like the Murrah, the first wave of the explosion shatters windows and rips vertical supports away from the foundation as it creates an upward wave of motion. A shock wave penetrates to the interior, pressuring floor slabs, causing them to fall. The shock then creates pressure on the roof and sides of the building. A vacuum is created, causing a wind that can carry debris great distances. The explosion also forms a crater in the ground, creating an earthquake-like atmosphere, shaking the entire site.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 33]

Merrick Garland, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington, receives an “Urgent” report on his computer from Oklahoma City. The report concerns the bomb that has just ripped through the Murrah Federal Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Some of the report is speculation and some of it is incorrect. It was hastily compiled and sent out from the administrative office of the US Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. The report reads in part: “An explosion was heard. Black smoke billowed from a few blocks north.… The explosion rocked the private leased space which houses the US Attorney’s office three blocks north from the federal courthouse.” The report gives details about the federal safety officials sent to investigate: “Along the three-block walk, they found massive glass in the streets from several of the high-rise buildings. Along the way, walking wounded were everywhere, along with emergency rescue vehicles. It appears, and has been speculated, that a massive bomb exploded in the area of ATF, DEA, or Secret Service offices in the Murrah Federal Building. Employees from HUD indicated there were a few suspected deaths, and a couple of critically injured.… Damage to the Murrah building included the front of the building being blown off, several floors seem to be missing, and you can see right through the building in the area of the 7th, 8th, and 9th floors.” Safety officials have inspected the nearby federal courthouse and found extensive damage there as well. “It appeared some small explosions were continuing, perhaps gas lines.” Garland enters the office of Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who calls Attorney General Janet Reno with the news. Reno asks for further information as it comes in. Garland looks for television news reports but sees nothing yet. Another “Urgent” report comes over his computer, again from the US Attorney’s office for the Western District in Oklahoma, and again mixing factual details with errors. “Information was received by the district that it was a bomb,” it reads. “Information was received by the district that there was a second bomb and it was NOT detonated. The northeast side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was blown out. The 9th floor of the building is gone. All grand jurors have been evacuated. One WDOK (Western District of Oklahoma) employee has a child in the day care center in the Federal Building. Unconfirmed reports from the district were six children in the day care center killed, although CNN is reporting that all of the children are safe. The district reported that there was a bomb threat at a church located north of Oklahoma City. In reviewing cases, the US Attorney’s office initially reported that a defendant in a methamphetamine case had apparently made threats against the government.” Garland now sees pictures from the scene on television news reports, and realizes immediately that the devastation had to have been caused by a bomb and not a gas main break or any other accidental occurrance. By this time, Garland’s office is filling with prosecutors and staffers, stunned at the scenes they are witnessing on TV. Garland meets again with Gorelick, and both meet with Reno. Their first priority is to take control of the situation, and Reno alerts the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A third “Urgent” report comes in; Garland reads: “A Channel 4 [local Oklahoma City television station] reporter reported the Nation of Islam has claimed responsibility for the bombing.… (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After) Dahlia Lehman, the victim witness coordinator in the Western District of Oklahoma, has a daughter employed at the DEA office in the Alfred Murrah Federal Building.” Garland leaves the Justice Department and runs across the street to the FBI building. Stepping into the Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC), he is amazed at the number of tips already pouring in about the bombing. He stays in the SIOC office for much of the day, coordinating leads and details as information arrives. FBI Director Louis Freeh is in an adjacent room; like Garland, he is collating and processing information. Reports of bomb threats swamp the offices throughout the day (see 9:22 a.m. April 19, 1995 and 10:00 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995). [Serrano, 1998, pp. 182-187]

The rear axle of the Ryder truck from the bombing (foreground), used by the FBI to identify the truck and discover the identity of the bomber. The axle was blown 575 feet and crushed the Ford Festiva depicted in the photo. [Source: Associated Press]The White House announces that the FBI will be the lead investigative agency for the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Some in federal law enforcement feel that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) is the better choice to conduct the investigation, considering that agency’s expertise with explosives, but the White House wants to avoid the infighting and turf wars that ensued after the Branch Davidian raid (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993) and culminated in the tragedy that claimed 78 lives (see April 19, 1993). The FBI has also been training intensively since the Davidian tragedy on handling major events such as this one. The BATF will be involved, and some internal bickering will take place. FBI supervisor Weldon Kennedy, who runs the Phoenix FBI office, is named lead agent. Kennedy supplants Robert “Bob” Ricks, the FBI’s special agent in charge of Oklahoma City. Ricks had worked on the Branch Davidian siege. FBI Director Louis Freeh names Kennedy, not Ricks, to lead the investigation because of new FBI procedures, implemented after the Davidian tragedy, that call for increased group responses to major crisis situations. Kennedy has been training other agents in the new system and has experience working with a recent series of prison riots in Atlanta. Moreover, Kennedy has no connection to Oklahoma City and therefore does not know any of the victims or the law enforcement officials involved. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 184, 191-192] Some 350 agents and specialists, many of whom have friends and co-workers in the Murrah Building, are assigned to the investigative task force. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 33] In the following days, the FBI will perform intensive searches of the site of the bombing and of the surrounding area, marking off the areas in small grids and questioning everyone available. Gas stations and truck stops on highways leading in and out of Oklahoma City will be searched, and their employees questioned. A hundred and twenty-nine dump truck loads of debris will be carted to a sifting site at the county sheriff’s gun range 10 miles away, and the debris examined and sorted. In all, 1,035 tons of debris will be examined, much of it by hand. Telephone leads are followed up. The Justice Department’s Merrick Garland will spend the next three months leading the investigation until a group of US Attorneys named by Attorney General Janet Reno takes over. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 221]

The disaster response efforts for the Murrah Federal Building blast in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and 9:02 a.m. - 10:35 a.m. April 19, 1995) are interrupted when police are dispatched to a nearby building to investigate a suspicious briefcase that may contain a second bomb. A police bomb squad finds nothing. [The Oklahoman, 4/2009] Police Sergeant John Avera is one of the rescuers who has to leave the Murrah Building because of the bomb report. Avera ignores the bomb warning, trying to help free a woman trapped under huge shards of concrete and piles of bricks and rebar. She begs him not to leave her, but he has to. Before he leaves, he writes her name and her husband’s name on a piece of paper, intending to call her husband and tell him his wife was still alive. But somehow, in the confusion, he loses the piece of paper. He later racks his brain trying to recall her name. He believes her first name is Terry. He is later told that the woman was rescued, but he does not know this for certain. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 168-172]

In the hours after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), some believe that the bombing was the work of Islamist terrorists. Televised news reports air theories of Islamist involvement, and say that eyewitnesses have reported seeing “Middle Eastern-looking men” fleeing the scene of the crime. [Los Angeles Times, 4/20/1995; Fox News, 4/13/2005] One eyewitness describes a man running from the scene clad in a black jogging outfit; many both in US intelligence and in the media assume that the man is likely Middle Eastern. One source tells reporters that the FBI has received claims of responsibility from at least eight groups, seven of which seem to be of Middle Eastern origin. Some officials privately fear that the bombing is the work of either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, two violently militant Islamist organizations. [Los Angeles Times, 4/20/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 185] Later in the day, Abdul Hakim Murad, an al-Qaeda operative in US custody, attempts to take credit for the bombing, but his associate Ramzi Yousef, also in US custody, does not (see April 19, 1995). In another instance, Jordanian-American Abraham Ahmad, attempting to fly to Jordan to visit relatives, is detained and questioned during a layover in Chicago. Ahmad, whom some sources describe as Palestinian-American, lives in Oklahoma City. A naturalized citizen who has lived in Oklahoma City since 1982, he has a background in computer science and is making a scheduled departure this morning to Jordan. His five suitcases contain, among other items, several car radios, large amounts of electrical wires, solder, a VCR, and a tool kit. He has packed a blue jogging suit and a pair of black sweatpants. Federal magistrates rush to serve him with a material warrant, moving so quickly that they misspell his name. He is stopped and questioned in Chicago before being allowed to continue his flight. He is stopped again in London, and this time is detained, strip-searched, and paraded in handcuffs through the crowded airport. He is photographed, fingerprinted, and returned to Washington before being transported to Oklahoma City. His name is leaked to the news media as a possible bombing suspect, creating a firestorm of interest; reporters crowd around his family’s home in Oklahoma City, and angry citizens vandalize his front yard. Authorities learn that Ahmad is going to Jordan for a family emergency. He will be released on April 21, will attend a memorial service for the bombing victims, and will file a $1.9 million lawsuit against the federal government. In later days, government officials such as counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will say that the possibility of Islamist involvement on some level is difficult to disprove (see Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994 and November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995). [Serrano, 1998, pp. 185-186; Clarke, 2004, pp. 127; Fox News, 4/13/2005] Justice Department spokesman John Russell says of Ahmad: “He cooperated. There is no reason for him to be held.” (The Washington Post, in reporting this, does not name Ahmad, and identifies him as “Palestinian-American.”) [Washington Post, 4/22/1995] Shortly after the bombing, senior FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt, who had worked with the FBI at the Branch Davidian siege outside Waco, concludes that the bomber is probably a white male with militia ties and not an Islamist terrorist (see April 19, 1995).

Federal, state, and local authorities begin hunting for clues in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and 9:02 a.m. - 10:35 a.m. April 19, 1995). The FBI has been named the lead investigative agency (see After 9:02 a.m., April 19, 1995). It begins by tracking the Ryder truck that delivered the bomb. At the bomb scene, veteran FBI agents James L. Norman and James Elliott examine the truck axle that had crushed a nearby car; Norman finds a partial vehicle identification number, PVA26007. Elliott begins a database search for the truck through the National Insurance Crime Bureau, and by 2:15 p.m. the FBI learns that the vehicle is registered to a Ryder rental firm in Miami, and the rental agreement is traceable under its registration number, 137328. A quick check with the Miami office shows that the truck, a 1993 Ford with a 20-foot body, was rented from a Ryder rental firm in Junction City, Kansas, for a one-way trip to Omaha, Nebraska (see April 15, 1995). The identification is confirmed by the Florida license plate on the remains of the Ryder truck, NEE26R, which matches the Ford rental truck. The renter is listed as “Robert Kling” (see Mid-March, 1995). Confirmation of McVeigh as 'Kling' - FBI agents call the Junction City shop; owner Eldon Elliott (no relation to the FBI agent) answers, and the agents tell him to pull the Kling paperwork for them. At 4:30 p.m., Federal agent Scott Crabtree, the resident agent in nearby Salina, Kansas, arrives at the Junction City shop to gather information on the rental and on “Kling,” and to get the documents forwarded to FBI headquarters as soon as possible. Crabtree interviews Elliott, office manager Vicki Beemer, and mechanic Tom Kessinger. They tell him about “Kling,” and about a second man that might have been with “Kling.” From their descriptions, Crabtree gathers enough information to put an FBI sketch artist to work on drawings of two suspects who rented the truck (see April 20, 1995). The artist’s renditions are hampered by discrepancies and confusion among the three’s descriptions. They cannot agree on details about “Kling“‘s height, weight, the color of his eyes, or the look of his face. Their recollections of the second man are even more confusing and contradictory, but all three insist that there was a second man. The FBI quickly learns that the driver’s license used to rent the truck, issued to “Kling,” is false. The issue date of the Kling license is April 19, 1993, the date of the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). The next day, interviews with Lea McGown, the proprietor of the Junction City Dreamland Motel (see April 13, 1995 and 3:30 a.m. April 18, 1995), reveal that “Kling” is a man McGown identifies as “Tom McVeigh.” She will also remember his Ryder truck parked in her lot. Shortly afterwards, the FBI learns via a national crime computer check that Timothy (not Tom) McVeigh is in custody in nearby Perry, Oklahoma, on unrelated weapons and vehicle charges (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995), and that McVeigh’s description closely matches that of “Kling.” [New Yorker, 5/15/1995; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 188-191, 195; Douglas O. Linder, 2001]Plethora of False Leads - After the sketches are released, the FBI office in Oklahoma City is bombarded with phone calls by people who claim to have seen the person, or both persons, in the sketch before the bombing. A motorist claims he saw a man running across the street near where the Ryder truck had been parked in front of the Murrah Building, and says he had to hit his brakes to keep from running into him. A woman says she saw a man strongly resembling “Kling” at the Murrah Building a week before the bombing, and “possibly again” a few days later. A meter maid tells an agent, and later a USA Today reporter, she nearly ran into the Ryder truck, and claims that the truck was going at an extremely slow speed and made her think the driver was going to stop and ask directions. A man claims to have seen “two individuals” in the Ryder truck 20 minutes before the bombing, and says one resembled the sketch of “Kling.” Another witness claims to have seen a car “speeding” away from the site of the blast, “obviously in an effort to avoid the bomb blast”; the witness is sure two people were in the car, and their testimony is later presented in evidentiary hearings by the FBI. The manager of a Texaco mini-mart in Junction City says the two men in the sketch had been hanging around his store for four months, visiting twice a week and stocking up on cigarettes and sodas. A bartender at the Silverado Bar and Grill in Herington, Kansas, where co-conspirator Terry Nichols lives (see (February 20, 1995)), says he remembers McVeigh and Nichols (both of whom he later identifies) coming into his bar every weekend for the last month, shooting pool and drinking beer. Many witnesses describe McVeigh as “polite,” and some say he comes across as a bit “funny.” At least one says the two smelled bad, as if they had just come from a pig farm—this detail comes after news reports inform citizens that the bomb had been composed of fertilizer. The FBI takes all the tips seriously, but most are quickly proven to be baseless. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 184, 224; Serrano, 1998, pp. 193-194]

Timothy McVeigh’s Mercury Marquis and two Oklahoma state trooper vehicles, in a photo taken shortly after McVeigh was pulled over for not having a license plate. [Source: University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law]Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), who has been stopped by a state trooper for having no license plates on his vehicle and arrested for that violation and for carrying a concealed weapon (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995), is incarcerated in the Noble County jail in Perry, Oklahoma. McVeigh tells another inmate, burglary suspect John Seward, that he had been stopped because he did not have a driver’s license or inspection sticker on his car. Seward will later tell investigators that during McVeigh’s stint in the jail, he makes two phone calls. Seward does not know who McVeigh may have called, though he believes one of the calls is to a local bondsman. McVeigh will remain in the Noble County jail, identified as Inmate 95-057, for two days before authorities connect him to the bombing (see After 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 20, 1995, 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995, and April 21, 1995). [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 1-10]

Steve Stockman. [Source: Steve Stockman]Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX), a freshman congressman who has won fans in the militia movement for his defense of “citizen’s militias” and his accusations that the Clinton administration deliberately caused the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After), receives a fax regarding the Oklahoma City bombings (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). The fax reads: “First update. Bldg 7 to 10 floors only military people on scene— BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms]/FBI. Bomb threat received Last Week. Perpetrator unknown at this time. Oklahoma.” According to a statement released by Stockman five days later (see April 23-24, 1995), no one in his office pays any attention to the fax until they learn of the Oklahoma City bombing. Once they realize that the fax may pertain to the bombing, a staffer forwards it to the FBI. Later investigation will show that the fax was sent by Libby Molloy, a former Republican Party official in Texas who now works for Wolverine Productions in Michigan, a firm that produces shortwave broadcasts aimed at militia audiences. (The fax has the word “Wolverine” stamped across the top as part of the sender information.) Molloy also sends the fax to Texas State Senator Mike Galloway and to the offices of the National Rifle Association (NRA). [New York Times, 4/23/1995; 'Lectric Law Library, 4/24/1995; Dallas Morning News, 4/25/1995; Time, 5/8/1995; Houston Press, 6/22/1995]

Michael and Lori Fortier, close friends of suspected Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh who have some involvement in the bombing conspiracy (see May-September 1993, February - July 1994, August 1994, September 13, 1994, October 21 or 22, 1994, and December 16, 1994 and After), see the news broadcasts of the bombing on television in their Kingman, Arizona, home (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). They have a house guest, Marion Day Laird. Laird will later recall that the Fortiers exhibit almost no reaction to the news of the bombing. “They acted the same,” she later says. “They didn’t act any differently that I would notice.” Fortier’s recollection of his reaction is quite different. “Right away, I thought Tim did it,” he will say. “I think I thought, ‘Oh my God, he did it.’” Fortier and his wife discuss calling the FBI the day of the bombing, or at least asking advice from Lori’s father, but after seeing President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno promise the death penalty for those responsible (see 4:00 p.m., April 19, 1995), they decide to tell no one. Later, when the FBI tracks them down and begins pressing them for information, Michael Fortier will lie about their involvement. “I felt Tim was like a buffer zone,” Fortier will say. “If people thought he was guilty, then that would bring suspicion down on myself. But if he was innocent, then surely I would have no knowledge.” In the days after the bombing, when FBI investigators first question the Fortiers, as Michael Fortier will recall, “I told them I didn’t think Tim was capable of it.” When asked about the possible involvement of suspected accomplice Terry Nichols, Fortier will say: “I just gave a negative answer that I didn’t know nothing about Terry. I just wanted to push him aside and not even have to think about him.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 239-240] Investigators become more interested in the Fortiers after learning that a local reporter seeking to interview the couple is greeted with a shotgun and the words, “Stay away from here.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 184]

Abdul Hakim Murad is in a US prison awaiting trial for his alleged role in the Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995). Told about the Oklahoma City bombing that took place earlier in the day (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), he immediately takes credit for the bombing on behalf of his associate Ramzi Yousef. However, Yousef, also in US custody at the time, makes no such claim (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After). An FBI report detailing Murad’s claim will be submitted to FBI headquarters the next day. [Lance, 2006, pp. 163-164] A Philippine undercover operative will later claim that Terry Nichols, who will be convicted for a major role in the Oklahoma City bombing, met with Murad, Yousef, and others in the Philippines in 1994, and discussed blowing up a building in Oklahoma and several other locations (see Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994). Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will later comment: “Could [Yousef] have been introduced to [Nichols]? We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols’s bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 127] Mike Johnston, a lawyer representing the Oklahoma City bombing victims’ families, will later comment: “Why should Murad be believed? For one thing, Murad made his ‘confession’ voluntarily and spontaneously. Most important, Murad tied Ramzi Yousef to the Oklahoma City bombing long before Terry Nichols was publicly identified as a suspect.” [Insight, 6/22/2002] Also on this day, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, an associate of Yousef and Murad who is being held in the US, is moved from a low security prison to a maximum security prison. [Lance, 2006, pp. 164] But despite these potential links to Muslim militants, only five days after the Oklahoma City bombing the New York Times will report, “Federal officials said today that there was no evidence linking people of the Muslim faith or of Arab descent to the bombing here.” [New York Times, 4/24/1995] Murad’s claim apparently will not be reported in any newspaper until two years later [Rocky Mountain News, 6/17/1995] , when lawyers for Nichols’s bombing partner, Timothy McVeigh, tell reporters that their defense strategy will be to claim that the bombing was the work of “foreign terrorists” led by “a Middle Eastern bombing engineer.” The lawyers will claim that the bombing was “contracted out” through an Iraqi intelligence base in the Philippines, and it is “possible that those who carried out the bombing were unaware of the true sponsor.” The lawyers also say it is possible, though less likely, that the bombing was carried out by right-wing white supremacists, perhaps from the Elohim City compound (see 1973 and After, 1983, 1992 - 1995, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, August 1994 - March 1995, September 12, 1994 and After, November 1994, February 1995, and April 5, 1995). [New York Times, 3/26/1997] The claims of foreign involvement will be discredited (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After).

President Clinton declares a state of emergency for Oklahoma City. Attorney Janet Reno is at the left. [Source: The Oklahoman]In a live television press conference, President Clinton addresses the nation regarding the morning’s bombing in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). He says: “The bombing in Oklahoma City was an attack on innocent children and defenseless citizens. It was an act of cowardice and it was evil. The United States will not tolerate it. And I will not allow the people of this country to be intimidated by evil cowards. I have met with our team which we assembled to deal with this bombing, and I have determined to take the following steps to assure the strongest response to this situation. First, I have deployed a crisis management under the leadership of the FBI (see After 9:02 a.m., April 19, 1995), working with the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, military and local authorities. We are sending the world’s finest investigators to solve these murders. Second, I have declared an emergency in Oklahoma City. And at my direction, James Lee Witt, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is now on his way there to make sure we do everything we can to help the people of Oklahoma deal with the tragedy. Third, we are taking every precaution to reassure and to protect people who work in or live near other federal facilities. Let there be no room for doubt. We will find the people who did this. When we do, justice will be swift, certain, and severe. These people are killers and they must be treated like killers. Finally, let me say that I ask all Americans tonight to pray, to pray for the people who have lost their lives, to pray for the families and the friends of the dead and the wounded, to pray for the people of Oklahoma City. May God’s grace be with them. Meanwhile, we will be about our work. Thank you.” Clinton asks Americans to pray for the victims. Attorney General Janet Reno follows Clinton in the conference, and says, “The death penalty is available and we will seek it.” She refuses to speculate on whether the date of the bombing—the two-year anniversary of the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After)—is a coincidence or something more. “We are pursuing all leads,” she says. “This has been a tragic and heartbreaking day.… We cannot tell you how long it will be before we can say with certainty what occurred and who is responsible but we will find the perpetrators and we will bring them to justice.” At another time during the same day, Clinton tells a Des Moines reporter: “I was sick all day long. All of us have been looking at the scene where those children were taken out, and all of us were seeing our own children there. This is an awful, awful thing.” [PBS, 4/19/1995; Los Angeles Times, 4/20/1995; Associated Press, 4/20/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 187] Clinton press secretary Michael “Mack” McCurry later credits Clinton for putting an end to what he will call “the anti-Arab hysteria that almost swept this country. Because remember, in the first several hours, everyone was pointing fingers at Arab terrorists (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After and April 19, 1995), which turned out to be obviously wrong.” [PBS Frontline, 2000]

The FBI’s Clint Van Zandt, a “profiler” at the bureau’s behavioral science unit, discounts the idea that the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) is the work of foreign terrorists. Instead, Van Zandt notes that the date of the bombing is the two-year anniversary of the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). Van Zandt worked the Branch Davidian case. He concludes that the perpetrator is white, male, in his twenties, with military experience and possibly with ties to far-right militia groups. Van Zandt says the perpetrator is likely angry about the Davidian and Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992) incidents. Coinciding with Van Zandt’s prelimilary profile, terrorism expert Louis R. Mizell notes that the date is “Patriot’s Day,” the date of the Revolutionary War battle of Lexington and Concord, and a date revered by the militia movement (see 9:00 p.m. April 19, 1995). Van Zandt’s profile is an accurate description of bomber Timothy McVeigh. [Douglas O. Linder, 2006; TruTV, 2008]

Richard Wayne Snell, a right-wing extremist who helped concoct plans to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1983 (see 1983), is executed in prison some 12 hours after Timothy McVeigh detonates a fertilizer bomb outside that same building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Snell is affiliated with the far-right groups Aryan Nations (see Late 1987 - April 8, 1998) and the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, and has connections to the now-defunct violently extremist group The Order. Snell was convicted of two murders: the 1983 robbery and murder of Texarkana pawnbroker William Stumpp (whom Snell wrongly believed was Jewish), and the shooting death of a black state trooper, Louis Bryant, who in 1984 pulled Snell over for a traffic violation near De Queen, Arkansas; Snell shot Bryant as he approached his vehicle, then shot him to death as he lay on the ground. (In his trial, Snell argued that he killed Bryant in self-defense.) He fled the scene of Bryant’s murder and was chased to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, where he was wounded and subdued by officers. In his car, those officers found the gun Snell used to murder Stumpp. Snell now terms himself a “prisoner of war.” Right-wing paramilitary groups have protested his execution, calling him a “patriot,” and term the federal government “the Beast.” Snell, who has published a periodic white supremacist newsletter, “The Seekers,” was the focus of a March 1995 issue of another organization’s newsletter, the Montana Militia, which reminded its readers that Snell’s execution was set for April 19, stating: “If this date does not ring a bell for you then maybe this will jog your memory. 1. April 19, 1775: Lexington burned; 2. April 19, 1943: Warsaw burned; 3. April 19, 1992: The fed’s attempted to raid Randy Weaver, but had their plans thwarted when concerned citizens arrived on the scene with supplies for the Weaver family totally unaware of what was to take place (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992); 4. April 19, 1993: The Branch Davidians burned (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After); 5. April 19, 1995: Richard Snell will be executed—unless we act now!!!” The Montana Militia’s plan of action was to flood the Arkansas governor’s office with letters protesting Snell’s execution. Snell’s jailers later say that for the last four days, Snell has predicted something “big” would happen on the day of his execution (see (April 1) - April 18, 1995). On his last day, Snell is allowed a visit by Elohim City founder Robert Millar (see 1973 and After), his “spiritual advisor,” where they watch the events of the Oklahoma City bombing unfold on television. Snell reportedly chuckles over the bombing, though Millar will say Snell is “appalled” by the reports. Snell’s last words are a threat directed to Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker (D-AR), as he is being strapped to a gurney for execution by lethal injection. “Governor Tucker, look over your shoulder,” Snell says. “Justice is coming. I wouldn’t trade places with you or any of your cronies. Hail the victory. I am at peace.” McVeigh will not mention Snell, and there is no evidence linking Snell or his colleagues to the Oklahoma City bombing. [New York Times, 5/20/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 161-162; Time, 2/24/1997; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Anti-Defamation League, 8/9/2002] Snell’s widow will later say she has no reason to believe her husband had anything to do with the bombing. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 271] Millar brings Snell’s body back to Elohim City for internment. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 270]

The sketches of “John Doe No. 1” and “John Doe No. 2” as released by the FBI. [Source: The Oklahoman]The FBI releases sketches of the two men believed to be responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing the day before (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). The men are identified as “John Doe No. 1” and “John Doe No. 2.” [Indianapolis Star, 2003; The Oklahoman, 4/2009] The sketches are based on interviews with witnesses in Oklahoma City and in Kansas (see April 15, 1995). FBI agent Raymond Rozycki speaks to three employees at Elliott’s Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas, who give him most of the details used to compile the sketches (see April 13, 1995 and April 15, 1995). [Fox News, 4/13/2005] Additionally, Attorney General Janet Reno announces a $2 million reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the bombers. [Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 809] The sketches are released on the authority of lead FBI agent in charge Weldon Kennedy (see After 9:02 a.m., April 19, 1995). In the following days, updated sketches are released, showing “John Doe No. 2” in profile and wearing a baseball cap with lightning streaks on the side. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 193, 261]One Identified within a Day; Second Never Identified, May Not Exist - Within a day, “John Doe No. 1” is identified as Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995). Lea McGown, the owner of the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas, speaks to FBI agents and recognizes “Robert Kling” as “Tom McVeigh,” a man who stayed in the motel the week before (see April 13, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). McVeigh had checked into Room 25 on Friday, April 14, she says, and stayed through the weekend. She also remembers McVeigh driving a large Ryder truck to the motel. “John Doe No. 2,” described as a stocky, swarthy man with a lantern jaw and a tattoo on his arm, will never be conclusively identified (see June 14, 1995). Agents seal off Room 25 and begin going over it for forensic evidence. [New York Times, 4/24/1995; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 194; Indianapolis Star, 2003] In 1998, author Richard A. Serrano will characterize “John Doe No. 2” as the man who “either got away with the biggest crime in US history or is a man who never lived.… Discounting the crank or ‘hysterical’ sightings (see February 17, 1995 and After, April 13, 1995, April 15, 1995, April 15, 1995, 3:00 p.m. April 17, 1995, 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995, 9:00 p.m. April 17, 1995, 8:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, April 18, 1995, and (1:00 a.m.) April 19, 1995), only three people ever saw John Doe No. 2. Eldon Elliott, Vicki Beemer, and Tom Kessinger, the three Ryder employees (see April 13, 1995 and April 15, 1995), would recall only minor details about the man, and their recollections were as shadowy as his face.” Beemer will later say: “They were both in the office. I really don’t recall what the other guy—he was in there, but I don’t really recall where he was standing exactly.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 259-260]False Sightings - Bogus sightings and detentions will abound after the sketches of “John Doe No. 2” are released. In Georgia, motorist Scott Sweely is stopped by a local sheriff and ordered to crawl out of his car window and lie facedown on the asphalt. Someone at a gas station told local police that Sweely looked like the sketch of Doe No. 2. Sweely is taken into custody and grilled by federal agents for four hours before being released. In Minnesota, a man resembling Doe No. 2 is arrested at gunpoint at the Mall of America. In California, a man AWOL from the US Army is rousted from his home and transferred to Los Angeles, where crowds scream and demand “justice” be carried out against him. A former Army friend of McVeigh’s, Roger L. Barnett (see January - March 1991 and After and January - March 1991 and After), is considered a possible Doe No. 2. Barnett resembles the descriptions of the supposed accomplice—he is stocky and has a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his arm. He also lives near the Arkansas state line, close to the gun dealer whom alleged co-conspirator Terry Nichols robbed to help finance the bombing (see November 5, 1994). However, time cards from his workplace show Barnett was at work the entire week of the bombing, and he passes a lie detector test. Another Army friend, Ray Jimboy, now working as a fry cook in Okemah, Oklahoma, is briefly considered a possibility, but a lie detector test clears him. For a time, Joshua Nichols, Terry Nichols’s son, is considered a possible Doe No. 2, though Joshua is 13 years old. The FBI is bombarded with calls; one husband even tells agents that the Doe No. 2 sketch is his wife. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 260-262]

A former co-worker in New York identifies 27-year-old Timothy McVeigh, suspected of being the Oklahoma City bomber (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), as “John Doe No. 1” depicted in police drawings (see April 20, 1995). Authorities issue a warrant for McVeigh’s arrest, and quickly learn that he is under arrest in the Noble County Courthouse in Perry, Oklahoma, for misdemeanor weapons charges (see After 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995); a check of McVeigh’s Social Security number matches one flagged by the FBI as belonging to a suspect in the bombing, a check made because McVeigh is from out of state. McVeigh is arrested by federal agents less than an hour before making $5,000 bail on the charges. “He came desperately close to making bail,” Assistant District Attorney Mark Gibson will later say. [Washington Post, 4/22/1995; New York Times, 4/22/1995; New York Times, 4/22/1995; New York Times, 4/22/1995; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] This afternoon, Joe Wolfinger, the head of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York, office, calls Niagara County Sheriff Tom Beilein and asks him to run a background check on McVeigh, who grew up in Pendleton, New York, just below the US-Canadian border (see 1987-1988). Beilein will later report he finds nothing. Deputies from Beilein’s force along with state police officers meet with federal agents at the home of McVeigh’s father, Bill McVeigh, who is stunned by the news that his son may be the one responsible for the bombing. Police soon find themselves working to keep members of the local and national media from overrunning the house. A state police officer lowers the McVeighs’ American flag to half-mast. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 24, 179-180] It is likely that the former co-worker is Carl Lebron, who once worked with McVeigh as a security guard (see April 20-21, 1995).

White separatist Terry Nichols (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994, November 5, 1994, and November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995), learning that the federal authorities have connected him to the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), decides to turn himself in to local authorities in Herington, Kansas (see (February 20, 1995)). [Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 810; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Nicole Nichols, 2003]Drives to Police Station - It is unclear if Nichols knows that his ex-sister in law has cooperated with authorities (see April 20-21, 1995). He suspects that he is being watched, but does not realize that a team of three FBI agents from the mobile command post at Fort Riley is surveilling him, a single-engine FBI airplane is circling overhead, and a larger surveillance team is en route. The first agent to arrive is Stephen E. Smith, who learns little about Nichols from Police Chief Dale Kuhn except that the address they have for him in Herington is accurate. Smith then meets two other agents from the command post and they drive to Nichols’s home on Second Street. Nichols, who is listening to radio reports about the investigation, picks up a broken fuel meter from his garage, tells his wife Marife (see July - December 1990) he is going to “do something about” the meter, gives her $200, and loads her and their young daughter Nicole into his truck. Unbeknownst to Nichols, he and the family are being followed by Smith and the two agents, who saw him pulling out of his driveway. (At this moment, the FBI is more interested in Nichols’s brother James—see April 20-21, 1995. Smith’s primary assignment is to compile background information on James Nichols.) When a second car joins Smith’s car in tailing Nichols, he realizes he is being followed. Nichols waves at the cars. He then turns into the driveway of the local Surplus City store, steps out, then thinks better of it and re-enters his truck. Instead, he goes to the Herington Public Safety Building, which houses the local police station. He tells Marife that if agents ask her about his whereabouts on Easter Sunday (see April 16-17, 1995), she should tell them that he went to Oklahoma City, not Omaha as he had told her that day. The two FBI cars pull into the building parking lot close behind. [New York Times, 7/2/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 200-202]'I Want to Talk to Somebody' - At 3:05 p.m., Nichols walks into the police station with his wife and their young daughter Nicole. Nichols is carrying his daughter in his arms; the FBI agents assume incorrectly that he intends to use her as a shield for possible gunfire. Marife Nichols will later describe her husband as “scared [and] anxious to know what’s going on.” According to Assistant Chief Barry W. Thacker: “He said: ‘My name is Terry L. Nichols. I just seen my name on television. I want to talk to somebody.’ I said: ‘Come on in. I think I can find somebody for you to talk to.’” Nichols, seemingly angry and agitated, says: “I’m supposed to be armed and dangerous. Search me.” Marife Nichols takes Nicole from her husband, and he removes his green jacket while Kuhn attempts to calm him. Outside, Smith and the other agents huddle together in the parking lot, worrying that Nichols may be attempting to take hostages in the police station. They call their supervisors in Kansas City; meanwhile, Kuhn reassures them that Nichols is not being belligerent. Shortly thereafter, Smith and the other agents enter the station. Nichols demands of them, “Why was my name on radio and television?” Smith explains they want to talk to him because he “is an associate of Timothy McVeigh.” The agents, along with some of the local constabulary, take Nichols to the basement and begin a lengthy interrogation session, led by Smith and fellow agent Scott Crabtree. Kuhn will testify that his officers tell Nichols three times that he is free to leave if he chooses. Instead, Nichols chooses to stay, telling one officer that “he was afraid to leave” and return to his home. From Washington, lead FBI counsel Howard Shapiro advises the agents to keep Nichols talking. [New York Times, 4/24/1995; New York Times, 7/2/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 202-203] FBI agents will interrogate Nichols and his wife Marife for nine hours (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995) and search Nichols’s property (see Evening, April 21, 1995 and After).

Modern-day logo for the Lockport Union Sun & Journal. [Source: Lockport Union Sun and Journal]Brandon M. Stickney, a reporter for the Union Sun & Journal of Lockport, New York, receives a frantic phone call from his editor, Dan Kane, ordering him to go immediately to an address in Pendleton, New York, eight miles away. The man identified as a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995), is from Pendleton, and his family still lives there. The address is of the McVeigh family home. Stickney, who will later write a book on McVeigh entitled All-American Monster, begins interviewing friends and family members over the following days and writing articles about McVeigh for his newspaper. Initially, some of the information Stickney garners is incorrect: one of his first articles reports that McVeigh was said to have hung out with a “less than reputable crowd” during his high school days at nearby Starpoint High, a statement that is contradicted by friends such as Pam Widner, who accurately characterizes McVeigh as an honor student. Widner steers Stickney towards people who knew McVeigh well, and the picture that Stickney compiles of McVeigh is that of a bright, personable young man with a strong interest in computers and a shy, awkward demeanor towards women, whose broken, troubled family life may have presaged his later actions (see 1987-1988). Widner “proved how easily the mass media could misrepresent McVeigh,” Stickney will later write. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 11-16, 74-75]

Marife Nichols, the wife of suspected Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) who has accompanied her husband to voluntarily submit to questioning by law enforcement authorities (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995), is questioned for six hours by the FBI. Though she has requested to be present during the FBI’s search of her home, she is not present during that search, though she, like her husband, signs a form giving permission to let agents search the home. Marife Nichols later claims she does not understand her legal rights as explained to her during questioning (see June 28, 1996). The agents who question her tell her that while she has the right to a lawyer, the only reason she needs one is if she intends to lie to the investigators. During the interrogation, agents refuse to let her leave to get diapers for her young daughter Nicole from the truck. She is unaware that the agents are worried that Terry Nichols may have wired the truck to explode if it is tampered with; also, they want to examine the truck for evidence. Instead, an agent goes to a nearby store and gets fresh diapers for Nicole. She will be allowed to return to their house for brief periods over the next days, always escorted by police or FBI agents; one thing she wants to do is retrieve the $5,000 in cash and nine gold coins she has hidden under her bedroom mattress. When she finally gets the chance to attempt to retrieve the cash unobserved, she will find that the FBI has already found the cash and coins and confiscated them. An FBI supervisor will tell her that the cash and coins will be returned to her once they are examined for fingerprints at the FBI lab. Days after the interrogation, she will call one of Nichols’s lawyers, Ron Woods, and leave a phone message telling him that the FBI will “not let her leave.” The FBI will later contend that Marife Nichols was never held against her will, and use a telephone conversation she has with her father-in-law as proof (see April 30, 1995). In late May, the FBI will return all but $200 of the cash, which they will say needs to be retained for further lab tests. [New York Times, 7/2/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 204, 227-230]

The home, pickup truck, and property of suspected Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, 2:00 p.m. and After, April 21, 1995, and 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995) are searched by federal authorities while FBI agents are grilling Nichols and his wife Marife, both of whom are in police custody in Herington, Kansas. Agents are also involved in searching the Decker, Michigan, home and property of Nichols’s brother James, as bomber Timothy McVeigh listed James Nichols’s residence as his home address (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). Initial searches of both sites turn up bomb materials, including five 60-foot safety fuses with blasting caps, Primadet explosive, five gasoline cans, a fuel meter, several containers of ground ammonium nitrate fertilizer, three empty bags of ammonium nitrate, a receipt for the purchase of the ammonium nitrate, four white barrels with blue lids made from material resembling the blue plastic fragments found in the bomb debris, and weapons that may be illegal to possess, including an anti-tank weapon. In searching Terry Nichols’s home and property, agents also find a cache of documents, many concerning the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) and espousing sometimes-violent anti-government sentiments, and a hand-drawn map of the Murrah Federal Building and its environs (see September 7-8, 1996). They find a spiral notebook that seems to be a combination phone book and diary, including dates and amounts for storage locker rentals, notations of the aliases used to rent the lockers (including the aliases “Ted Parker” and “Joe Kyle”), notes about “Tim” and “places to camp,” and some notations by Nichols’s wife Marife that describe quarrels she has had with her husband. And they find a telephone card whose number was used by McVeigh to make calls in his hunt for bomb-making materials (see August 1994). The weapons, map, and materials found may tie either or both Nichols brothers to the bomb plot. [New York Times, 4/22/1995; New York Times, 4/23/1995; New York Times, 4/26/1995; New York Times, 5/12/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 229; Indianapolis Star, 2003; Douglas O. Linder, 2006] Nine of the guns found in Nichols’s home—a Savage .30-06 rifle, a Remington .30-06 rifle, a Ruger carbine, a Ruger Mini-30 rifle using 7.62-millimeter ammunition, two Ruger Mini-14 rifles, a Winchester 12-gauge Defender shotgun, a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip, and a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter pistol—are similar to those stolen from an Arkansas gun dealer some six months ago (see November 5, 1994). Prosecutors believe Nichols, or perhaps Nichols and bombing suspect McVeigh, carried out that robbery to help fund the bomb plot. Of 33 weapons listed as found in Nichols’s house on the FBI’s Evidence Recovery Log, six rifles, two shotguns, and a pistol appear to be the same models as stolen weapons on the Garland County Sheriff’s office record of the robbery. They also find a safe-deposit key they believe was taken during the robbery (see November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995). [New York Times, 6/17/1995] Nichols is told during the interrogation that agents have found a number of large plastic drums or barrels in his garage. He says he bought these at a dump in Marion, Kansas, and used them to haul trash. Agents also found a large fuel meter in the garage; Nichols says he bought this from a sale in Fort Riley, and says it is broken. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 212-213] A relative of the Nichols brothers tells the FBI that “James Nichols had been involved in constructing bombs in approximately November, 1994, and that he possessed large quantities of fuel oil and fertilizer,” according to an affidavit filed with the court. “Terry Nichols was in Decker, Mich., on or about April 7, 1995, visiting his brother, James Nichols, and may possibly have been accompanied by Tim McVeigh.” James Nichols (see December 22 or 23, 1988) is currently held in the Sedgwick County jail in Wichita, Kansas, as a material witness to the bombing (see April 21, 1995 and After). [New York Times, 4/23/1995]

The press reports that Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) received a fax shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) that described the effects of the blast (see 10:50 a.m. April 19, 1995). FBI investigators initially believed that Stockman received the fax three minutes before the 9:02 a.m. blast, but later determined that it had been sent shortly afterwards. They believe that the fax may have been sent by Mark Koernke, a member of the Michigan Militia. Authorities are seeking Koernke for questioning, but say that questioning him is not a high priority. [New York Times, 4/23/1995; 'Lectric Law Library, 4/24/1995] The fax will later be determined to have been sent around 10:50 a.m., almost two hours after the blast. Subsequent reporting claims that Stockman received the fax from Libby Molloy, the former Republican chairwoman from Orange County, Texas, who has ties to the Michigan Militia. Texas State Senator Mike Galloway also says that his office received a copy of the fax the same day, and turned it over to the FBI. The fax contained the word “Wolverine” stamped at the top; Molloy now works for Wolverine Productions, a Michigan firm that produces shortwave broadcasts aimed at militia audiences. [Dallas Morning News, 4/25/1995] Koernke broadcasts via Wolverine Productions. Stockman will deny knowing either Molloy or Koernke, though Molloy will later say that Stockman’s office has provided Wolverine Productions with information helpful for Koernke’s broadcasts. [Time, 5/8/1995] Stockman releases a statement concerning the fax and the subsequent press reporting, writing in part: “On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing someone sent our office an anonymous fax which appeared to relate to that tragedy. Our office—not aware of the bombing or the meaning of the fax—set it aside. Our office—like the offices of most public officials, receives every imaginable kind of mail from the public. This fax was no different. After my staff heard news reports of the tragedy—the fax was retrieved and I was made aware of it. I immediately instructed my staff to turn the fax over to the FBI. My office did so within minutes. There has been some confusion in the media over when my office received this fax and when we turned it over to the FBI. There has been no confusion in my office—we turned it over right away.” Stockman says the FBI has confirmed his version of events, and attaches a statement from FBI official John Collingwood showing that he sent the fax “at 11:57 a.m. on April 19, 1995, to the FBI Office of Public and Congressional Affairs.” Stockman also says that a member of his staff sent another copy of the fax to the National Rifle Association (NRA) on April 20, and says, “I believe the staffer acted in good faith, nonetheless, this was done without my knowledge.” Stockman believes he received the fax because of a memo he sent to Attorney General Janet Reno on March 22, 1995, asking if the Justice Department planned any raids against “citizen’s militia” groups and warning of a Branch Davidian-like debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) if the raids were actually carried out. ['Lectric Law Library, 4/24/1995] The Houston Press will later report that the initial confusion about the timing of the fax was caused by the NRA, whom the Press will call “Stockman’s chief patron.” The Press will also note that Stockman has ties to the militia movement, and in a recent Guns and Ammo magazine article, accused the Clinton administration of deliberately killing the Branch Davidians and burning their compound in order to justify its ban on assault weapons (see September 13, 1994). Stockman says he regrets “some of the language he used” in the article. Stockman has also associated himself with anti-Semitic radio show host Tom Valentine, and railed against “outside influences,” presumably Jewish, in the Federal Reserve and other federal financial institutions. [Houston Press, 6/22/1995]

The FBI says that evidence compiled on the Oklahoma City bombing shows that it was planned for months by accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995) and a small number of co-conspirators. The statement by the FBI echoes statements made earlier by Attorney General Janet Reno (see April 22, 1995). Evidence shows that McVeigh was driven in part by his rage at the government’s handling of the Branch Davidian standoff two years earlier (see April 19, 1993). McVeigh has refused to cooperate with investigators, and reportedly has shown no remorse or emotion of any kind, even when confronted with photographs of dead and maimed children being taken from the devasted Murrah Federal Building. The attack was timed to coincide with the Branch Davidian conflagration of April 19, 1993, investigators say, and was executed after months of planning, preparation, and testing. Some investigators believe that McVeigh may lack the leadership skills to plan and execute such a plot, and theorize that the ringleader of the conspiracy may turn out to be someone else (see April 21, 1995 and After). Evidence collected from the Ryder truck, particularly shards of blue plastic from barrels containing the fertilizer and fuel oil that comprised most of the bomb’s elements, point to the involvement of Terry Nichols, a friend of McVeigh’s who is coming under increasing scrutiny as a possible co-conspirator (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995). Similar barrels were found in Nichols’s garage in his Herington, Kansas, home (see (February 20, 1995)), along with other evidence tying him to the bomb’s construction. Investigating Possible Involvement of Sister - Investigators are in the process of searching the home of McVeigh’s younger sister Jennifer, who has returned from a vacation in Pensacola, Florida (see April 7, 1995 and April 21-23, 1995). They are also poring over Jennifer McVeigh’s 1995 Chevrolet pickup truck, registered in New York. Investigators say the two siblings are very close, share similar anti-government views (see March 9, 1995), and have had numerous conversations in recent months (see Mid-December 1994). Jennifer McVeigh is taken into federal custody as well, as a witness, not as a suspect, and is released on April 25, after an intensive interrogation session that leaves her frightened and angry. “They told me Tim was guilty,” she will later recall, “and that he was going to fry.” According to her recollections, the agents threaten to charge her as a co-conspirator unless she gives them evidence against her brother, but she refuses to cooperate. She does reveal some information about her brother’s involvement in gun dealing, his strong belief in the US Constitution as he and right-wing white separatist groups interpret it, and his obsession with the violently racist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978). “He had people he knew around the country,” she tells agents, mentioning three: “Mike and Lori and Terry.” Terry is Terry Nichols. “Mike and Lori” are McVeigh’s close friends Michael and Lori Fortier (see May-September 1993, February - July 1994, August 1994, September 13, 1994, October 21 or 22, 1994, April 19, 1995 and After, and December 16, 1994 and After). She tells them about watching anti-government videotapes with her brother, in particular one called “Day 51” about the Waco siege. “It depicted the government raiding the compound, and it implied that the government gassed and burned the people inside intentionally and attacked the people,” she tells the agents. “He was very angry. I think he thought the government murdered the people there, basically gassed and burned them down.” The agents ask if by the government, he meant the FBI and the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, also abbreviated BATF). “He felt that someone should be held accountable,” she answers, and says her brother believed no one ever had been held responsible. She shows them the “ATF Read” letter he had written on her word processor (see November 1994) that concludes with the exhortation, “Die, you spineless cowardice [sic] b_stards!” She says that McVeigh had told her he had moved out of a “planning” stage into an “action” stage, though he never explained to her exactly what “action” he intended to take. Later, she will sign a statement detailing what her brother had told her. She will always insist that he never spoke to her about ammonium nitrate, anhydrous hydrazine, or any of the chemical components of the bomb, and had never spoken to her about the scene in The Turner Diaries that depicts the FBI building in Washington being obliterated by a truck bomb similar to the one used in Oklahoma City. The FBI seizes a number of her belongings, including samples of her antigovernment “patriot” literature. But, they determine, Jennifer McVeigh was never a part of her brother’s conspiracy. Interviewing Alleged Co-Conspirator's Ex-Wife - Investigators are also interviewing Nichols’s ex-wife, Lana Padilla, who currently lives in Las Vegas. The press speculates that she is cooperating with the investigation and may have been taken to a undisclosed location for security reasons. Investigators are combing through a large body of writings McVeigh left behind, many of which detail his far-right, anti-government ideological beliefs. From what they have read so far, McVeigh believes that his Second Amendment rights are absolute, and he has the right to live without any restraints from the government. They have not found any documents detailing any operational plan for the bombing, nor have they found evidence that McVeigh directly threatened any government buildings or personnel. The FBI is offering a $2 million reward for information about McVeigh and the bombing. [New York Times, 4/24/1995; New York Times, 4/24/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 237-238]

The press reports that the FBI is closely investigating the “money trail” left behind by accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995). Witness reports say McVeigh and his suspected confederate had “thousands of dollars” in their possession in the days before the attack, though McVeigh has only worked sporadically at low-paying jobs for the last few years. The suspicion is that McVeigh and his suspected colleague or colleagues engaged in criminal activities, particularly bank robberies (see August - September 1994 and December 1994) and other thefts (see October 3, 1994 and November 5, 1994). Authorities are examining a half-dozen unsolved bank robberies in Kansas City, Missouri, and elsewhere in the Midwest, where two or more armed men used explosives to rob banks. Investigators say they do not as yet have hard evidence of just how McVeigh raised the money needed to finance his bombing plot. One September 1994 bank robbery in Overland Park, Kansas, was carried out by two men whose descriptions generally match those of McVeigh and his unnamed, suspected partner, “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995). [New York Times, 4/26/1995] It is possible that some of the robberies were carried out by the Aryan Republican Army, a white supremacist group to which McVeigh has ties (see 1992 - 1995) and which may have helped McVeigh fund his plot (see November 1994).

The press reports that since the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) and the arrest of former Army sergeant Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995), soldiers and citizens of Fort Riley, Kansas, have suffered anger and vitriol from other people outraged by the attack. Since McVeigh and suspected co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see April 25, 1995) were both soldiers, and McVeigh was once stationed at Fort Riley, “a lot of people seem to be blaming all of us because of a couple of fools,” says Fort Riley’s Sergeant Chris Killerbrew. “That’s not right.” Killerbrew recalls being in Oklahoma City three days after the bombing, and, with his family, going into a store to cash an out-of-town check. When he told the clerk his family was from Junction City, Kansas, a town near Fort Riley populated largely by current and former soldiers and their families, and used by McVeigh to stage the bombing (see April 13, 1995, April 15, 1995, April 15, 1995, April 16-17, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995, and April 18, 1995), a man in the store said: “Junction City, that’s where those bombers, those baby killers are from. Why don’t you go back to where you belong?” An angry Killerbrew informed the man that he and his family were in Oklahoma because his three-year-old niece had been killed in the bombing. Many other soldiers say that the charges against McVeigh, a decorated veteran of the Gulf War (see January - March 1991 and After), have wounded their pride and shaken their morale. Fort Riley spokesman Major Ben Santos says, “What we want to tell folks around the country is that there is more to us than the current situation.” Corporal Perez Blackmon says that he and many of his fellow soldiers feel betrayed and angry that “one of our own could have done something like this.… This uniform means pride, the highest state of honor. It gets no better than this, and he disgraced it.” Nearby resident Scott Sanders says the accusations against McVeigh make “us all look bad, like this is some center to train terrorists.” Clarence Thomas of Junction City says: “I wouldn’t move anywhere else. This McVeigh guy didn’t stay and live here. He wasn’t one of us.” [New York Times, 4/27/1995]

Federal authorities say that the Arizona license plate missing from accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s Mercury (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995) appears on a vehicle in a security camera videotape made near the Murrah Federal Building just before the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Authorities believe the second suspect in the bombing, “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995), may have used that vehicle for his getaway. The videotape shows both the vehicle—not McVeigh’s Mercury Marquis—and the Ryder truck containing the bomb. The Associated Press attributes the report to a federal official who speaks on condition of anonymity. [New York Times, 4/29/1995]

The FBI issues a nationwide alert for two men wanted as material witnesses in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). The men, Gary Allen Land and Robert Jacks, are under suspicion by federal investigators of having ties to bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995 and April 24, 1995). Land and Jacks, who live on disability checks and drive aimlessly around the country in a 1981 Ford Thunderbird, rented a room in an Arizona motel near McVeigh’s room in the first week of April. On April 19, Land and Jacks checked into the Deward and Pauline’s Motel in Vinita, Oklahoma, some 180 miles northeast of Oklahoma City. On April 20, the day after the bombing, they checked into the Dan-D Motel in Perry, Oklahoma, where McVeigh was being held by local authorities on unrelated charges (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995), checked out after just a few hours, and returned to their motel room in Vinita, some 140 miles away, where they stayed until April 24. Investigators believe that Land and Jacks may have been able to find out that McVeigh was being held by the local police, perhaps through an intermediary. Investigators tell reporters that the hunt for Land and Jacks may prove the contention that McVeigh was a part of a larger conspiracy (see April 24, 1995 and After). Some federal officials suggest Land may be “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995), based on his superficial resemblance to the sketch. Investigators search the Vinita and Perry motels, interviewing the managers and searching the rooms occupied by the two men. Land’s Thunderbird has an Arizona license plate; the car is registered to the address of the El Trovatore Hotel in Kingman, Arizona, the town where McVeigh spent so much of his time before the bombing. The managers of the El Trovatore say that Land and Jacks rented three different units from them between November 1994 and April 1995. The El Trovatore is a short distance from the Imperial and Hill Top Motels, where McVeigh stayed from April 1 through April 12 (see March 31 - April 12, 1995). The managers say that Land and Jacks told an employee that they were driving to Oklahoma to look for jobs; Jacks told another employee that he was Land’s uncle. Motel employees describe the two as, the New York Times writes, “brooding beer drinkers who sometimes played country music, but for the most part kept to themselves.” Neither man worked, employees say, but both paid their rent in cash and sometimes left their rooms during the morning as if they were going to jobs. Jacks told them that he and Land drove to nearby Needles, California, once a month to pick up their checks. At dawn on May 2, a dozen FBI agents in SWAT gear raid the two men’s motel room in Carthage, Oklahoma (the motel manager’s wife stays up all night making pancakes for the agents while they prepare for the raid). The two spend 18 hours in custody while agents search the room and the Thunderbird, using a remote-controlled robot to open the car’s doors in case it is wired to explode. Land and Jacks have no connection to McVeigh, and know nothing of the bombing. They will make a brief and memorable appearance on ABC’s Nightline a few nights later, where they boast of being long-time drunks and talk about their treatment at the hands of the FBI. [New York Times, 5/1/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 263-264] USA Today will put their pictures on the front page, above the fold, giving the impression that the FBI has solved the bombing case with the “capture” of these two “suspected conspirators.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 193]

FBI crime laboratory technicians comb through over 15,000 “entries” (items of evidence) from the Oklahoma City bombing scene (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) and from material gathered from suspects Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995) and Terry Nichols (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995 and May 1, 1995), eventually producing over 10,000 pages of lab notes. The prime focus at the outset is on McVeigh’s personal effects. No high-explosive materials are found on McVeigh’s jacket or boots, nor are any traces found on the blanket or cloth bag recovered from his car. However, traces of explosive compounds similar to those used in the bombing are found in the inside pockets of his jeans and on his earplugs, which he presumably used to protect his hearing from the roar of the explosion. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 222-223]

Accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 24, 1995) disavows two Houston lawyers who say they have been hired by his family to represent them. One of the lawyers, Brent Liedtke, suggests McVeigh is being manipulated by his two current defense lawyers, who have said they do not wish to continue representing McVeigh (see April 24, 1995 and April 27, 1995). Liedtke goes on to accuse prison officials of denying him and his partner, Paul Looney, access to McVeigh. In a one-page “advisement to the court,” McVeigh says Looney and Liedtke have portrayed themselves as his lawyers against his wishes. He says he met briefly with them at the Federal Correctional Institution at El Reno, Oklahoma, on April 27 and told them he did not want them on the case. “Any statements made by Messrs. Looney and Liedtke to the contrary are false and unauthorized,” McVeigh’s statement reads in part. “I do not now, nor did I ever, desire their representation in this matter.” McVeigh’s “advisement” is filed by his current lawyers, Susan Otto and John Coyle. Liedtke states that he doubts McVeigh wrote the document, saying: “I don’t think he uses words like ‘Messrs’ and like this. This is not the way he talks.” Liedtke says McVeigh’s sister Jennifer (see April 24, 1995) retained Looney. [New York Times, 5/4/1995]

The search for bodies at the bombed-out Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) is called off due to the instability of the remaining structure. The bodies of Christi Rosas, Virginia Thompson, and Alvin Justes, who were all in the building’s credit union, remain buried in unstable rubble. The bodies will be recovered on May 29. [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Fox News, 4/13/2005]

Terry Nichols (see March 1995, April 16-17, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995, and 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995) is charged as a co-conspirator in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Prosecutors say that Nichols, though he did not participate directly in the bombing, played a direct and central role in carrying it out with accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995). Nichols is charged in a criminal complaint that is filed under seal with the court; a lawyer involved in the case says the prosecution may be trying to keep some undisclosed details of the evidence it is providing out of the public eye for the time being. Nichols’s lawyer, public defender David Phillips, says he expects Nichols to be indicted at any time. Nichols is being held in custody in Wichita, and will likely be moved to Oklahoma City soon. Prosecutors may be pressuring Nichols to turn state’s evidence against McVeigh, and lead them to others who may have been involved in the plot, particularly the elusive “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995). Nichols insists that he had no idea McVeigh planned to bomb the Murrah Federal Building, but prosecutors believe otherwise. One witness who may testify against Nichols is his former wife, Lana Padilla. In an interview Padilla recently gave to a tabloid television show, American Journal, she said Nichols gave her a package in 1994 that contained a key to a storage locker; the locker contained thousands of dollars in gold and silver bouillon (see November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995). In previous interviews with reporters, Padilla had not mentioned the locker. Investigators also believe that their 12-year-old son, Joshua Nichols, may have been at the rental office in Junction City where the Ryder truck containing the bomb was rented (see April 15, 1995). Some witnesses in Herington, Kansas (see (February 20, 1995)), say they saw Joshua Nichols in town the same day that McVeigh rented the Ryder truck in Junction City; a supermarket manager recalls seeing Nichols and his son on April 17, when they rented three film videos and bought a can of peanuts. “They browsed around about 30 minutes,” the manager says. “He came up to the clerk and said he was a new customer. She asked for his driver’s license and he said he didn’t have one. She asked for his Social Security number, and he just told us a number.” [New York Times, 5/9/1995; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Fox News, 4/13/2005] Joshua Nichols tells reporters for ABC News that he was not with his father as the supermarket manager has stated. Prosecutors say Padilla put her son on a plane for their home in Las Vegas on April 17. [New York Times, 5/10/1995] Nichols is formally charged the following day (see May 10, 1995).

Federal prosecutors charge Terry Nichols, a suspected co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and May 9, 1995), with conspiring to carry out the bombing along with accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995). If convicted, Nichols could face the death penalty under federal anti-terrorism laws. Nichols is escorted under heavy guard into the Wichita, Kansas, federal courthouse; a woman in the crowd screams at him, “Baby killer!” Nichols is charged with being a direct participant in the “malicious damage and destruction” of a federal building, and charged with aiding and abetting the attack. Prosecutors have not yet revealed the evidence they have against him. The charges faced by McVeigh and Nichols are likely to be augmented or replaced entirely by a broader conspiracy indictment, federal officials say. Nichols’s public defender, Steven Gradert, refuses to speculate on whether the prosecutors are attempting to pressure Nichols into cooperating with their prosecution of McVeigh. “I don’t know,” Gradert says, and adds that he believes “the government is not quite sure what the theory of this case is.” Nichols is being transported to Oklahoma, where he will be incarcerated at the El Reno Federal Corrections Center, the same facility that currently houses McVeigh. Nichols’s ex-wife Lana Padilla and their son Joshua Nichols are in Oklahoma City to testify before a grand jury empaneled to hear evidence about the bombing. The FBI is also pressuring another friend of McVeigh’s and Nichols’s, Michael Fortier, to give more information (see April 23 - May 6, 1995, May 1, 1995 and May 8, 1995). Nichols has been held in the Sedgwick County, Oklahoma, jail since April 22 as a material witness to the bombing. He is accompanied by his two public defenders, Gradert and David Phillips. Gradert calls his client “scared… upset, and… nervous.” [New York Times, 5/10/1995]

An FBI affidavit filed today in Oklahoma suggests that planning for the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) began as early as September 1994, when accused bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995 and April 24, 1995) began buying thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and rented the first of several storage sheds in small towns in Kansas (see October 17, 1994). Nichols is accused of accumulating two tons of ammonium nitrate and, just before the bombing, purchasing an unspecified quantity of diesel fuel, another essential ingredient for the bomb. The affidavit, unsealed at a hearing for Nichols at the El Reno Federal Corrections Center outside Oklahoma City and intended to show a judge that sufficient grounds exist to charge Nichols with the bombing, provides the first look at the government’s case against Nichols and accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995). The affidavit provides a chronological timeline of events that together portray Nichols and McVeigh as Army buddies turned amateur terrorists, and suggests that Nichols may have actually led the bomb-making effort, though he did not participate in the bombing itself. Nichols’s brother James Nichols has also been indicted on charges of building bombs (see May 11, 1995). However, the indictment shows no direct involvement by James Nichols or anyone else in the bombing conspiracy. The indictment specifically offers no evidence that the as-yet unidentified “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995), suspected of accompanying McVeigh when he rented the Ryder truck used to deliver the bomb (see April 15-16, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995), is involved in the bombing, though authorities continue to search for him, believing him to be either a co-conspirator or a valuable witness. The affidavit states that “an explosive device of the magnitude” that wrecked the Murrah Federal Building “would have been constructed over a period of time utilizing a large quantity of bomb paraphernalia and materials.” Building such a bomb, the document says, “would necessarily have involved the efforts of more than one person,” although it does not say how many. The affidavit also reveals that five months before the bombing, Nichols left a letter that instructed McVeigh to clean out two of the storage sheds if Nichols were to unexpectedly die, told McVeigh he would be “on his own,” and said he should “go for it!” (see November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995). It shows that a search of Nichols’s home found numerous materials appearing to be related to the bomb, including explosive and other materials used in the bomb itself. And Nichols has admitted to having the knowledge required to make an ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) bomb such as the one used in Oklahoma City. He said he disposed of ammonium nitrate by spreading it on his yard on April 21 after reading press accounts that the substance was one of the ingredients used in the bomb, and told investigators that the materials they found at his home were “household items.” After the 13-minute hearing, US Magistrate Ronald L. Howland orders Nichols held without bail pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for May 18. Patrick M. Ryan, the interim US Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma, reads the charges against Nichols, and says the government will seek the death penalty. Nichols is currently represented by two federal public defenders, David Phillips and Steven Gradert, but the judge is expected to appoint another lawyer to represent Nichols on the bombing charges. [New York Times, 5/12/1995]

Authorities indict Steven Garrett Colbern on federal weapons charges in Oatman, a small mining town in northwestern Arizona. They describe Colbern as a “drifter” who is wanted on weapons charges in California. Colbern becomes of far more interest to federal authorities when he tells them he knew accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995). However, authorities say they have no reason to believe Colbern was part of the bomb plot. Colbern attempted to fight off the law enforcement officials who arrested him, even attempting to pull a pistol during the brief melee, and is charged with resisting arrest as well. Investigators search his Oatman trailer and find firearms, ammunition, stolen medical supplies, and a laboratory for making methamphetamine, but no evidence linking Colbern to the bombing. Colbern tells investigators that he knew McVeigh under his alias, “Tim Tuttle” (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994 and February - July 1994), but says he knows nothing about the April 19 bombing. US Attorney Janet Napolitano says she does not want Colbern released on bail just yet. Oatman residents say Colbern came to town about four months ago, and has supported himself as a dishwasher and cook’s helper at a local restaurant. He has a degree in chemistry from UCLA and was a former research associate in DNA studies at Cedars-Sinai Research Institute in Los Angeles. Acquaintances who knew him during his youth in Oxnard, California, say he always had an interest in science and explosives. Dale Reese, who knew Colbern in a school biology club, says of Colbern: “He did talk about explosives. He was just interested in those sorts of things. He just liked making things go boom. He was very strange, very smart, kind of nerdish, kind of lonerish. I didn’t like the guy.” Authorities found a letter in McVeigh’s possession addressed to someone with the initials “S.C.,” and further investigation connected the letter with Colbern. Oatman is only 20 miles southwest of Kingman, Arizona, where McVeigh has frequently lived (see November 1991 - Summer 1992, May-September 1993, February - July 1994, September 13, 1994 and After, October 4 - Late October, 1994, February 1995, February 17, 1995 and After, and March 31 - April 12, 1995). Restaurant owner Daryl Warren tells a reporter that he has heard Colbern express anti-government and pro-Nazi sympathies in the past, and has spoken of the Arizona Patriots, a right-wing paramilitary group (see April 22, 1995). Warren says: “I do recall on two or three occasions politics being brought up, and he would always make references to the Third Reich. I was convinced that he was not too happy with our government.” Warren also says that Colbern was out of town for two or three weeks at the time of the bombing; Lou Mauro, who employs Colbern, says Colbern told him he was going to Los Angeles to visit his ailing mother and did not return until the weekend of April 22. One of Colbern’s roommates, Preston Scott Haney, says he and Colbern were together at the time of the bombing. “They [the FBI] think he is part of the Oklahoma bombing, but he was sitting right next to me when the bomb went off,” Haney says. “And he was here the week before and the week after.” Officials in Washington say they do not believe Colbern is “John Doe No. 2,” the missing man suspected of either being part of the bombing plot or a material witness to the conspiracy (see April 20, 1995). Another of Colbern’s roommates, Dennis Malzac, is also arrested on arson charges, and is suspected of being connected to an explosion behind a house in Kingman last February (see February 1995), along with a second man suspected of being in Connecticut. [New York Times, 5/13/1995] Newsweek will describe Colbern as a “gun-toting fugitive.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 193] Days later, federal officials will clear Colbern of any involvement in the bombing. They will say that they hope Colbern can shed some light on McVeigh’s activities in the months before the bombing, and may offer him leniency on the charges he faces if he becomes a witness for the government prosecution of McVeigh. Both Colbern and McVeigh frequented gun shows in the northern Arizona area, but no witnesses have come forward to say they ever saw them together. [New York Times, 5/16/1995] Authorities believe McVeigh may have tried to recruit Colbern for his bomb plot (see November 30, 1994).

Amo Roden. [Source: Amo Roden]Reporter Peter J. Boyer publishes an article in the New Yorker depicting the almost-mesmerizing attraction the scene of the 1993 Branch Davidian massacre (see April 19, 1993) has over radical right-wingers. The site of the Branch Davidian compound, on a hill outside Waco, Texas, has been razed and burned over, but enough debris remained for Amo Bishop Roden to come to the site, fashion a crude shack from fence posts, pallets, and sheet metal, and take up residence there. Roden, the wife of former Davidian leader George Roden (see November 3, 1987 and After), says God told her to come to the site to keep the “end-time church” of Davidian leader David Koresh alive. She makes money by selling Davidian memorabilia, including T-shirts and photos. “People come by every day,” she says. “And usually it’s running around a hundred a day.” Most of the people who come to the site are tourists, she says, “but some are constitutional activists.” Boyer writes that Roden’s “constitutional activists” are “members of that portion of the American extreme fringe which believes the FBI raid on the Davidian compound exemplified a government at war with its citizens.” Boyer writes that those radical fringe members regard the Davidian compound as “a shrine,” and view April 19, the date of the Davidians’ destruction, as “a near-mystical date, warranting sober commemoration.” Last April 19, two things occurred to commemorate the date of the conflagration: the unveiling of a stone monument listing the names of the dead, and the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). The man responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh, has himself made the pilgrimage to Waco (see March 1993). Alan Stone, a professor of psychiatry and law at Harvard, says the mistakes made by the federal government at Waco will continue to fuel right-wing paranoia and conspiracy theories until the government acknowledges its mistakes: “The further I get away from Waco, the more I feel that the government stonewalled. It would be better if the government would just say, ‘Yes, we made mistakes, and we’ve done this, this, and that, so it won’t happen again.’ And, to my knowledge, they’ve never done it.” [New Yorker, 5/15/1995; Amo Roden, 2010] Religious advocate Dean Kelley writes that Roden collects money from tourists and visitors, ostensibly for the Davidians who own the property, but according to Kelley, the Davidians never receive any of the donations. [Dean M. Kelley, 5/1995] Four years after Boyer publishes his article, a similar article, again featuring an interview with Roden, is published in the Dallas Morning News. Paulette Pechacek, who lives near the property, will say of her and her husband, “We expected it [the visits] for months afterwards, but it surprises us that people still come.” [Dallas Morning News, 6/27/1999]

The New York Times reports that Timothy McVeigh, accused of executing the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995), has claimed responsibility for the bombing. The Times’s sources are two people who have spoken with McVeigh during his continuing incarceration at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma; they spoke to Times reporter Pam Belluck in return for anonymity. McVeigh, the sources claim, told them he chose the Murrah Federal Building as a target because it housed so many government offices, and because it was more architecturally vulnerable than other federal buildings. The sources say McVeigh said he knew nothing of the day care center in the building, and was surprised to learn that children had died in the bombing. McVeigh told the sources that he was not “directly involved” with armed civilian paramilitary groups (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994, September 12, 1994 and After, November 1994, December 1994, January 1995, and April 5, 1995), though he admitted to having “relationships and acquaintances with a few people who have similar views,” primarily people he met at gun shows, the sources say. They say McVeigh acknowledges responsibility for the bombing, but does not believe he committed a crime. They say that McVeigh told them the planning for the bombing began at least nine months ago (see September 13, 1994, October 21 or 22, 1994, November 5, 1994, November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995, March 1995, March 31 - April 12, 1995, April 13, 1995, April 15, 1995, and 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995), and he had considered targets throughout the Midwest, from Denver to Kansas City to Texas and South Dakota. They say that McVeigh told them he had gone to the bomb site at least once (see October 20, 1994 and April 16-17, 1995) but had not gone inside the building. Federal officials say the Murrah Building was extremely vulnerable to explosive damage because of its large glass windows, its nine floors which could collapse upon one another, and because of the absence of any courtyard or plaza separating the building from the street, where a truck carrying a bomb could be parked. McVeigh’s alleged statements to the two sources suggest that those factors greatly influenced his choice of the building. The sources say that McVeigh was motivated to carry out the bombing in part because of the 1992 killing of white supremacist Randy Weaver’s wife and son during a standoff with federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (see August 31, 1992), and because of his fury over the Branch Davidian debacle outside Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). McVeigh was also driven, they say, by a more general hatred of the government, which may be fueled in part by his failure to land a well-paying job when he left the Army (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). The sources say McVeigh did not single out any one experience that triggered his desire to plan and execute the bombing. McVeigh also noted, they say, that he did not specifically target the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), some of whose agents in Oklahoma City participated in the Davidian siege. Rather, they say, McVeigh wanted to target as many government agencies as possible in one strike. McVeigh talked about the significance of the date of the bombing, April 19; not only was it the date of the Davidian tragedy, but it was the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, where in 1775 the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. The sources provide few details of the bombing plot, and it is unclear if McVeigh divulged any such details. The sources say McVeigh did not speak much of his accused co-conspirator, Terry Nichols (see March 1995, April 16-17, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995, 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995, and May 11, 1995), nor did he speak of others who might have been involved in the plot. They say that McVeigh did mention his acquaintance Steven Colbern (see May 12, 1995), and said that Colbern was not involved in the plotting. The sources say that while McVeigh carefully plotted the bombing itself, the escape he planned was less well thought out (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). He forgot to transfer the license plate from a Pontiac he traded (see January 1 - January 8, 1995) onto his getaway car, a Mercury Marquis (see April 13, 1995); the failure to transfer the plate caused him to be pulled over by a highway patrol officer. McVeigh told the sources he had no money with him and no back-up person to help him if he was detained. “I don’t know how to explain that gap in his planning or his organization,” one of the sources says. “The primary objective was obviously the building itself.” One of the sources adds: “He’s very anxious, obviously, because of the position he’s in. He’s anxious to see what the next step is in the process and when this will be resolved.” [New York Times, 5/16/1995]

An Army friend of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, After May 6, 1995, and May 16, 1995), Michael Fortier, tells federal authorities that he and McVeigh inspected the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City as a potential bombing target in the days before the blast (see December 16, 1994 and After). Fortier knew McVeigh from their time together at Fort Riley, Kansas (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990), and says he knew of McVeigh’s plans for the bombing while the two lived in Kingman, Arizona (see May-September 1993, February - July 1994, August 1994, September 13, 1994 and After, September 13, 1994, October 4 - Late October, 1994, October 21 or 22, 1994, and February 17, 1995 and After). Fortier and his wife Lori decided to stop lying about their involvement with McVeigh and the bomb plot (see April 19, 1995 and After, April 23 - May 6, 1995, and May 8, 1995) and tell the truth after receiving subpoenas for their testimony before a grand jury investigating the bombing; instead of testifying under oath, Fortier opens a discussion with prosecutors about a settlement, and gives his statements about McVeigh in an initial offer of the evidence he says he can provide. They also ask the authorities about retaining a lawyer. Michael Fortier admits that a statement he signed in Kingman, Arizona, is mostly false. Fortier and his wife testify for hours about their involvement with McVeigh and their complicity in the bomb plot. Fortier is negotiating with federal prosecutors for a plea deal, and for immunity for his wife, in return for his cooperation in their prosecution of McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995, April 24, 1995, and May 11, 1995). Fortier says he and McVeigh drove from Arizona to the Murrah Federal Building about a week before the bombing in an apparent effort to “case” the building. Fortier denies he had any direct role in the blast, but authorities have been very interested in him since the day of the bombing. Authorities have searched his trailer in Kingman and questioned him thoroughly, though officials say they have no basis to charge him with any direct involvement in the bombing. Fortier may still be charged as an accessory to the bombing, or on other related charges. It is doubtful, people involved in the case say, that the government would give Fortier full immunity from prosecution. Fortier is the first person to directly implicate McVeigh in the bombing; until now, investigators have only a large amount of circumstantial evidence tying McVeigh to the blast. Nichols has denied any direct knowledge of the bombing, and currently is not cooperating with investigators. Some investigators believe that Fortier may be the elusive “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995), who is considered either a co-conspirator or a material witness with knowledge of the plot, though Fortier does not clearly match the description of the suspect. [New York Times, 5/19/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 244-245]

Joseph H. Hartzler. [Source: Associated Press]The US Justice Department names Joseph H. Hartzler, an Assistant US Attorney in Springfield, Illinois, to lead its prosecution of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, and May 16, 1995). Attorney General Janet Reno has moved Merrick Garland, who oversaw the initial phase of the bombing investigation, back to Washington to head the Justice Department’s criminal division. She creates what becomes known as the OKBOMB task force, a trial team focusing on continued investigation and the prosecution of McVeigh and his alleged accomplice, Terry Nichols. Reno selects Hartzler from dozens of resumes submitted by government lawyers from around the country. In the 1980s, Hartzler, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and is wheelchair-bound, helped convict four Puerto Rican nationalists accused in a bombing plot, and helped prosecute a federal judge in Chicago, in what became known as the “Greylord investigation.” He has worked as the chief of both the criminal and civil divisions in Chicago, one of the country’s largest US Attorney’s offices. Arlene Joplin, an Oklahoma City prosecutor, will remain on Hartzler’s prosecution team. Justice officials say that Hartzler was chosen because of several factors, including his background in complex criminal cases, terrorist prosecutions, and his ability to work with other government lawyers already on the case. Hartzler is asked by a criminal defense attorney not involved in the case what he thinks about it. Hartzler responds: “Whoever did this should spend some time in hell. I just want to accelerate the process.” Hartzler vows to have no press conferences, and will in fact have very few, though his team does have a few media “favorites,” most notably Jeffrey Toobin, a writer for the New Yorker and a legal analyst for ABC News who once worked with two of the OKBOMB staffers and is considered a supporter of the prosecution. [New York Times, 5/22/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 249-250] Missouri criminal defense lawyer Michael B. Metnick will later say of Hartzler: “His integrity is beyond reproach. He’s a prosecutor I can turn my back on.” Hartzler will tell a reporter that he asked for the McVeigh prosecution because “I thought I could make a difference.” [New York Times, 6/2/1997]

The Murrah Federal Building is demolished. [Source: The Oklahoman]The wrecked hulk of the Murrah Federal Building, destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing a month ago (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), is brought down in a planned demolition. The demolition consists of 150 pounds of dynamite placed in 300 carefully selected locations, and costs the federal and state governments around $404,000. The entire demolition takes about eight seconds. Retired highway department employee Lawrence Glover says: “You can’t stand to look at something like that forever. It’s like when a family member dies and your heart is broken, but you’ve got to bury them and try to get back to the land of the living. Even when you don’t think you ever can.” Linda West of nearby Yukon says: “I had stayed away before now because I felt guilty. I felt like I was intruding somehow. Now that it’s all over, I need some sort of—it’s not closure, because there is no closure on this thing, but it’s like going to the cemetery after the funeral. I was listening to a radio talk show about how most people didn’t know why they came here, they just felt like they had to. I’m like that. I don’t know why, but I had to.” Hundreds of spectators watch the demolition in almost complete silence. Afterwards, many cry, hug one another, and slowly leave the scene. Many at the scene believe a memorial to the dead, and to the responders and rescue workers who saved so many from the rubble, should be erected on the site; others say a children’s playground or library would be fitting. Onlooker Bruce Ligon says, “It doesn’t really matter what they choose, because nobody in this town, or in this country either, is ever going to forget what happened.” [Washington Post, 5/24/1995; Fox News, 4/13/2005] Authorities had considered using cranes and wrecking balls instead of explosives to bring the building down, in concern that a second explosion, no matter how controlled, might further traumatize city residents. “The psychological ramifications were a real consideration of everyone involved in the decision,” Douglas Loizeaux, vice president of Controlled Demolition Inc, whose firm handles the demolition process, said last week. “There was a serious discussion about whether we would be traumatizing people even more by having another explosion. But by using implosion, we can bring the building down weeks sooner than by using a crane, and so the mending process can begin that much quicker.” Dusty Bowenkamp, a psychological nurse from Los Angeles who is coordinating the emergency mental health services of the American Red Cross in Oklahoma City, agreed with Loizeaux’s assessment. The building, she said last week, is “a magnet for people with grief.” She said she and her colleagues had discussed the ramifications of a second explosion, and talked with dozens of people who helped bring the dead and injured out of the rubble and others who carried blast victims into hospitals or the morgue. A few, she said, thought imploding the building was a bad idea: “it’s too much like what happened before—too much like the bomb.” The city residents were informed well in advance of the planned demolition so it would not “retrigger more fear.” The lawyer for accused bomber Timothy McVeigh, Stephen Jones (see May 8, 1995), had filed a motion to delay the demolition so he could examine the building for evidence, but that motion was denied. [New York Times, 5/16/1995; New York Times, 5/16/1995] Two days ago, a team of people hired by Jones did examine the building for clues; that team included an explosives expert, an architect, and a camera crew. Jones explained that he wanted to understand “the dynamics of the bomb” and “the physics of the explosion.… There needs to be a separate record from that of the government. There is a criminal litigation and civil litigation. All sides will need a record, and the government’s record wouldn’t necessarily be available.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 222-223] A brick wall from another damaged building stands nearby. Written on it in dark red paint is: 4-19-95. We Search for the Truth. We Seek Justice. The Courts Require it. The Victims Cry for it. And GOD Demands it! [Serrano, 1998, pp. 174]

Robert Millar, the 69-year-old leader of the militantly religious, white supremacist community Elohim City in eastern Oklahoma (see 1973 and After), tells New York Times reporters that he and his community had nothing to do with accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, and April 24, 1995). The press has learned that some members of the Elohim City community may have devised the original Oklahoma City bomb plot (see 1983 and August 1994 - March 1995); McVeigh is suspected of having some ties with Elohim City community members (see January 23, 1993 - Early 1994, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, September 12, 1994 and After, November 1994, December 1994, February 1995, April 5, 1995, and April 8, 1995); and some sources claim federal agents were warned about the bombing from an informant in the community (see August 1994 - March 1995). Millar insists that no one in Elohim City knew who McVeigh was until they read about him in the papers. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him,” Millar says. “I don’t think he’s ever been in any of my audiences to the best of my knowledge. He may have gotten our telephone number from someone if he used our telephone number. And if he phoned here, nobody here has any knowledge of ever talking to him.” Newsweek has reported that McVeigh called someone in Elohim City two weeks before the bombing (see April 5, 1995). Asked by a reporter if he had heard of McVeigh, if McVeigh called or visited the community, and whether he condoned the bombing, Millar says, “No, no, no, and no.” To another reporter asking about McVeigh’s alleged visit, he replies, “I imagine that your unnamed government sources are manipulating you.” Millar served as a “spiritual advisor” to Richard Snell, who was executed the day of the bombing for murdering a state trooper and a shopkeeper in Arkansas (see 9:00 p.m. April 19, 1995). Asked if he continues to espouse the racist and anti-Semitic ideals that have marked his community for years, Millar produces a careful answer: “I think the least-gifted black person has divinely endowed intellectual and physical capabilities that the most sophisticated robot we can produce is not able to equal. So what I’m saying is, I think all of God’s creation is special and gifted and I’m not interested in denigrating or belittling or misusing any part of God’s creation. That should be a sufficient answer.” He portrays Elohim City as a small village of “less than 100 people” whose inhabitants desire to be left alone, have little money, and little need for money. The community supports itself, he says, on the labor of some of the men, who “do logging; they also haul hay for the neighbors.” District Attorney Dianne Barker Harrold tells reporters that she does not believe the community is a threat: “I have no reason to foresee any problems. They’ve been here 22 years, and there haven’t been any problems.” Millar also announces that his granddaughter Angela Millar is marrying James Ellison, the former leader of the now-defunct Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord. Ellison served a prison term for racketeering, and has claimed to have been involved in the 1983 Elohim City bomb plot (see 1983). [New York Times, 5/24/1995]

The lawyer for accused Oklahoma City co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see March 1995, April 16-17, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995) asks Federal Judge David L. Russell to release his client without bail. Defense lawyer Michael Tigar calls the government’s evidence against Nichols “lamentably thin,” and says Nichols’s actions, particularly in connection with accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, and April 24, 1995), were innocent and typical of a “peaceable, law-abiding person.” Tigar, along with co-counsel Ronald G. Woods, is apparently following a strategy of attempting to distance Nichols from McVeigh, claiming that Nichols and McVeigh had a “falling out” in February 1995 over plans to work gun shows and swap meets together. According to court papers filed by Tigar, Nichols had printed up his own business cards and other material for a new business trading in military equipment that had no place for McVeigh. Tigar also assails the government’s investigation, accusing FBI investigators of withholding evidence from the defense, of holding Nichols’s wife Marife (see July - December 1990) “virtually incommunicado and without counsel” for “33 days of continuous interrogation,” and of refusing to interview witnesses with information favorable to Nichols. According to Tigar’s timeline of events, Nichols, knowing little to nothing of a specific bomb plot (see Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994, April 19, 1993 and After, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, September 13, 1994, September 30, 1994, October 3, 1994, October 4 - Late October, 1994, October 17, 1994, October 18, 1994, October 20, 1994, October 21 or 22, 1994, November 5, 1994, November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995, November 7, 1994, March 1995, April 13, 1995, and April 15-16, 1995), met with McVeigh on April 16 in Oklahoma City and drove him to Junction City, Kansas (see April 16-17, 1995). Prosecutors have stated that the day before, McVeigh told Nichols that “something big is going to happen,” impelling Nichols to ask if McVeigh planned on robbing a bank (see April 15, 1995). In Tigar’s timeline, this exchange never happened. Instead, Tigar’s timeline recounts a lengthy story of McVeigh calling Nichols on April 16 complaining of car trouble; McVeigh, Tigar claims, had a television set with him that belonged to Nichols’s ex-wife Lana Padilla that Nichols wanted for his home in Herington, Kansas (see (February 20, 1995)). Nichols drove to Oklahoma City to get the television set. Tigar says that the Nichols family used the television set to watch a videotape of The Lion King and two other movies on April 17. In the days before the bombing, Tigar says Nichols took his family to a restaurant, picked up new business cards and labels, and, on the day of the bombing, visited a local hardware store and a military surplus dealer to discuss selling or trading Army tools, possibly for roofing shingles, and worked around his house. Tigar says Marife Nichols has confirmed this version of events. Tigar also says that prosecution allegations that Nichols used his pickup truck on April 18 to help McVeigh load fertilizer into the rented Ryder truck McVeigh used for the bombing (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995) are false, and instead Nichols had loaned McVeigh his truck, and not accompanied McVeigh to the loading site at Geary Lake in Kansas. Tigar also says that a fuel meter owned by Nichols and believed by the prosecution to have been used to measure the bomb ingredients was broken the entire time Nichols owned it. [New York Times, 5/19/1995; New York Times, 5/25/1995] Later press reports will show that Tigar’s information about the supposed “falling out” between McVeigh and Nichols comes from Padilla. According to Padilla: “He said, ‘Tim and I are going to go our separate ways and I am going to the shows myself.’ That surprised me. They were going to go their own ways and it was because Terry was going to buy his own house and have his wife and baby come out. I don’t think that Tim could stand that. Terry also said that Tim didn’t like kids.” [New York Times, 8/6/1995] The prosecution counters with a request to hold Nichols without bail, citing evidence seized from Nichols’s home that implicates him in the bombing conspiracy (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995), and a series of letters he wrote to the IRS and other federal agencies repudiating his citizenship and asking to be exempted from paying federal taxes (see April 2, 1992 and After). Prosecutors say the letters demonstrate Nichols’s repudiation of “roots to this country and its sovereign states” and that he therefore should be denied bail. “Nichols poses a danger to the community and an unreasonable risk of flight against which no conditions of release could adequately guard,” the prosecutors argue. Russell denies Nichols bail and orders him to remain in custody. Tigar says he will appeal the ruling. Russell also orders that Nichols be allowed to sleep without lights beaming into his cell 24 hours a day, and that prison officials not allow any more mental health professionals to interview Nichols without the court’s approval. Tigar has called a visit by a previous counselor “unwanted” and intrusive. [New York Times, 6/2/1995; New York Times, 6/3/1995]

Stephen Jones, the lawyer for accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995), is engaged in attempts to humanize his client in the public’s perception. As such, Jones gives an interview to the press where he talks about the huge volume of mail McVeigh receives every day, including letters of support and even marriage proposals. “The marriage proposals are kind of strange, but people have sent Bibles and other mementoes along with notes of support,” Jones says. “Some of these people have very anti-government views. They will write and say they believe the feds were responsible. One of the more radical said something like, ‘If you did it, right on.’ Others either wish him the worst or don’t indicate their preferences one way or another, except to say they hope he is able to get a fair trial.” Many of the letters McVeigh receives are from people who believe the government carried out the bombing; some ask if McVeigh was encouraged to carry out the bombing by government “provocateurs.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 235-236]

Law enforcement authorities call off the search for the so-called “John Doe No. 2,” believed to be another person involved in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 20, 1995). Officials say the sketch identifying the man is of an innocent person. The sketch has been “enhanced” twice to further aid in identification. [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Indianapolis Star, 2003] Government prosecutors say that the person believed to be depicted in the sketches is Todd David Bunting, an Army private from Fort Riley, Kansas; they say that Bunting has no connections to McVeigh or the bombing. A witness has told the FBI that he saw Bunting at Elliott’s Body Shop, a truck rental agency in Junction City, Kansas, on April 17, two days before the blast, either in the company of accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see April 21, 1995 and April 24, 1995) or standing close to him while McVeigh rented the Ryder truck used in the bombing (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). Authorities now believe that Bunting was at the rental shop on April 16, the day before McVeigh’s visit, or perhaps April 18, the day after. The FBI releases a statement that says in part: “That individual… resembles the sketch previously circulated as the second of two men who rented the truck on April 17 and who has been called John Doe No. 2.… [The FBI] has determined that individual who has been interviewed was not connected to the bombing.” Some investigators believe that the witness, the rental agent at the shop, became confused under pressure from investigators to recall the details of the second man he says he saw with McVeigh. [New York Times, 6/14/1995; Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 811; The Oklahoman, 4/2009] Bunting will later say that it is his face depicted in the composite sketches of “John Doe No. 2.” [New York Times, 12/3/1995] He closely resembles the sketch, and has a Carolina Panthers baseball cap with lightning strikes down the sides, much like the cap Doe No. 2 was said to wear. He even has a tattoo on his right arm where one witness said Doe No. 2 has a tattoo. The press learns of the Bunting identification before the FBI can hold an official press conference announcing its findings, and reporters trek to Timmonsville, South Carolina, where Bunting is attending the funeral of his mother-in-law, to interivew him; some reporters even barge into the funeral home. Bunting will later stand before cameras and reporters in a press conference held in Fort Riley, where he says he was at Elliott’s Body Shop in the company of another man, Sergeant Michael Hertig, to rent a truck and pack up his belongings to transfer to Fort Benning. He talks of the FBI’s questioning of him, and of the chill he felt when he learned he was being connected to the bombing, however tenuously. Author Richard A. Serrano will later write that after repeated humiliating press reports of false identifications of Doe No. 2 (see April 20, 1995 and May 1-2, 1995), the FBI wants the problems of Doe No. 2 to “go away… dissolve from the nation’s consciousness.” Serrano will suggest that agents deliberately found an innocent man, Bunting, who bears a strong resemblance to the sketch, and decided to use him to end the speculation. If true, the FBI’s efforts will be fruitless: the speculation will continue for years, with a Web site, “John Doe Times,” posted by an Alabama militiaman, hosting anti-government postings and criticism of the ongoing investigation. The far-right “Spotlight” newsletter will say in 1996 that federal agents had employed “dupes” to bomb the Murrah Building, and that McVeigh and Doe No. 2 were mere patsies. The newsletter will claim that Doe No. 2, a government provocateur, lives in hiding on an Indian reservation in upstate New York. Others will speculate that Doe No. 2 is white supremacist Michael Brescia (see August 1994 - March 1995, (April 1) - April 18, 1995, April 8, 1995, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), who bears a close resemblance to the sketch. Brescia later pleads guilty to crimes unrelated to the bombing and will deny any involvement. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 265-266] Author Nicole Nichols, an expert in right-wing domestic terrorism unrelated to accused co-conspirator Terry Nichols, will later speculate that Doe No. 2 is actually Andreas Strassmeir, a gun aficianado and member of the militaristic Elohim City compound along with Brescia (see 1973 and After). Press reports later state that McVeigh denies any involvement by Strassmeir (see February 28 - March 4, 1997). Prosecutors will later reiterate that Bunting is “John Doe No. 2” and reiterate that he has no connection to the bombing (see January 29, 1997).

In the weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), militia leaders and other anti-government leaders testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Southern Poverty Law Center will observe, “Many experts see the hearings as something of a militia victory because of the uncritical nature of the questioning.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

The constant presence of FBI agents in the small northern Arizona town of Kingman is unsettling the town’s residents. The investigators, combing through the town looking for evidence and witnesses to prove that former Kingman resident Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing (see March 1993, May-September 1993, February - July 1994, September 13, 1994 and After, October 4 - Late October, 1994, October 21 or 22, 1994, February 1995, February 17, 1995 and After, March 31 - April 12, 1995, and 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), contrast poorly with many of the 13,000 residents, who arm themselves well and consider themselves opponents of the federal government. Some residents were outraged when the FBI arrested Kingman’s James Rosencrans during one of its sweeps, after Rosencrans threatened agents with an assault rifle (see May 1, 1995). One resident, James Maxwell Oliphant, tells a reporter he has waited for over a decade for blue-helmeted United Nations occupational forces to kick in his door. Oliphant, a self-described “patriot” who carries a Ku Klux Klan business card, has blown off one of his arms practicing with explosives, taken in skinheads who later turned against him, and served time in prison for conspiring to rob armored cars. He sees the influx of FBI agents in Kingman as the first of a wave of assaults the US government intends to carry out against its citizenry. Many of Oliphant’s fellow residents agree with him. Another resident, who refuses to give his name, says: “This is just the first sound of the alarm. People are going to rise up. There’s going to be a war. You can hear about it on AM radio.” The New York Times writes that “since the 1970s, [Kingman] has become a haven for disillusioned Americans hoping to distance themselves from big government.” David Baker, who once sold McVeigh a car, says he rarely leaves his house now for fear that FBI agents may be lying in wait to question him. The investigators are having as much trouble with the overly garrulous residents as the uncooperative ones; one, Jack Gohn, tells larger and more expansive stories about McVeigh every day. Agents attribute Gohn’s often-fanciful recollections to his suffering with Alzheimer’s disease and his stated desire for the $2 million federal reward being offered for information. But many more residents are not forthcoming. One flea market vendor proudly admits to a reporter that he lied to FBI agents for sport: “I sold McVeigh a .44 Magnum once,” he says, adding that his name is John Smith and pausing to see whether the reporter appears to believe him. “But I didn’t tell them that. It’s none of their business.” [New York Times, 6/18/1995]

In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), President Clinton issues a classified directive on US counterterrorism policy. Presidential Decision Directive 39 (PDD-39) states that the United States should “deter, defeat and respond vigorously to all terrorist attacks on our territory and against our citizens,” and characterizes terrorism as both “a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act.” [US President, 6/21/1995; 9/11 Commission, 3/24/2004; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 101] The directive makes the State Department the “lead agency for international terrorist incidents that take place outside of US territory,” and the Justice Department, acting through the FBI, the lead agency for threats or acts of terrorism that take place in the United States. It defines “lead agencies” as “those that have the most direct role in and responsibility for implementation of US counterterrorism policy.” [US President, 6/21/1995; WorldNetDaily, 8/30/1999; US Government, 1/2001, pp. 8] Journalist and author Murray Weiss later calls the signing of PDD-39, “a defining moment, because it brought representatives from several other federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the Department of Health, into the antiterrorism program.” [Weiss, 2003, pp. 105] An April 2001 report by the Congressional Research Service will call this directive “the foundation for current US policy for combating terrorism.” [Brake, 4/19/2001, pp. 5 ]

Stephen Jones, the lawyer for accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995), releases flattering photographs and videotapes of his client, along with McVeigh’s US Army records, saying that the public has a right to know McVeigh “as he really is.” McVeigh is a patriotic, happy young man, Jones says, and, quoting McVeigh’s military records, an “inspiration to young soldiers.” The photos and videotapes show McVeigh smiling and laughing with his lawyers. Jones has also allowed McVeigh to be interviewed by retired Colonel David Hackworth, a Newsweek columnist (see June 26, 1995, July 3, 1995) and June 26, 1995). “The public is entitled to know more about Mr. McVeigh than the government has released anonymously,” Jones says. Jones has already discussed the large amount of “supportive” mail McVeigh is receiving in prison (see June 9, 1995). Newsweek has released excerpts from Hackworth’s interview with McVeigh. Jones denies trying to influence potential jurors, saying: “If I were trying to influence potential jurors, I could say a lot more. The principal purpose behind it is to present our client to the public, to the families of the victims, to the victims who survived, as we believe he really is, to let them see something other than the 10 to 15 seconds of him walking out of the Noble County Courthouse. What I think you should draw from the record is that this is a young man who served his country honorably for four years.” Jones explains that he and McVeigh granted the interview with Hackworth because “Hack wrote him and said that he wanted to talk with my client, soldier-to-soldier.” [Associated Press, 6/26/1995; Chicago Sun-Times, 6/26/1995] The public-relations blitz is not entirely successful. Janet Walker, who lost her husband David in the blast, says: “They can’t make him innocent by putting a smile on his face, and they can’t make him guilty until they convict him. It’s nothing more than a ploy. I know that. He’ll get his in the end, if he’s guilty.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 237-238] Jones tells reporters that McVeigh had been mistreated during his initial incarceration: telephone lines had been disconnected when he attempted to call a lawyer, and jailers had refused to give him a bulletproof vest during his “perp walk” transfer from the Noble County Courthouse (see April 21, 1995) because, Jones says, “It was like they were hoping Jack Ruby would come out.” Jones is referring to the man who shot accused Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before Oswald could be arraigned. Noble County Undersheriff Raymond Jones strongly denies both of Jones’s claims. Jones also says that a camera set up to monitor McVeigh in his El Reno Federal Corrections Center cell, which is active 24 hours a day, is there to “engage in a kind of psychological warfare” that might “ultimately, perhaps… have an effect on [McVeigh’s] mental stability, which in turn might affect the trial.” The camera is later turned off for four hours a day, complying somewhat with Jones’s wishes. Jones also accuses prosecutors of “wiretapping” McVeigh’s conversations with his lawyers, and says that government wiretaps have been placed on his own phones, charges the prosecution denies. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 233-234, 239] Judge David L. Russell notes that Jones “slipped” Hackworth and photographer Peter Annin into the El Reno facility by pretending they were members of McVeigh’s legal team, and later asks McVeigh if he is comfortable with his lawyer conducting himself in such a manner. “Obviously, you don’t want somebody representing you that is not going to give you their all, would you agree with that?” Russell asks McVeigh. McVeigh says he is confident that Jones is representing him well, and assures Russell that he is “mentally competent” to make that determination. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 247-248]

Stephen Higgins, the former head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF, sometimes abbreviated ATF), publishes an op-ed for the Washington Post explaining why his agency mounted a raid on the Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco, Texas (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993). Higgins says he wrote the piece after watching and reading about the public reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), which many claim was triggered by the Waco debacle (see April 19, 1993). Higgins says a raft of misinformation surrounds the BATF raid on the Davidian compound, and gives his rationale for the raid. BATF Did Not Instigate Investigation into Davidians - “[D]espite what fundraisers at the National Rifle Association would have us believe, the [B]ATF is not part of some sinister federal plot to confiscate guns from innocent people,” he writes. The agency was alerted to the Davidians’ stockpiling of weapons by reports from a local deputy sheriff, who heard from a United Parcel Services driver that a package he delivered to the Davidians contained grenade parts (see November 1992 - January 1993), and earlier deliveries included black gunpower, firearms parts, and casings. “[C]onspiracy theorists had best include the local sheriff’s office and UPS as part of the collusion,” Higgins writes. In addition, the day before the raid, the Waco Tribune-Herald began the “Sinful Messiah” series of reports on the Davidians and their leader, David Koresh (see February 27 - March 3, 1993), which detailed, Higgins writes, “the potential danger the group represented to the community as well as, somewhat ironically, the failure of local law enforcement agencies in addressing the threat. (The conspiracy now would have to include the local newspaper publisher!)” Davidians Posed Clear Threat to Community - Higgins says that it would have been dangerous to assume that the Davidians were peaceful people who did not plan to actually use the weapons they were amassing, and repeats the claim that Koresh said in late 1992 that “the riots in Los Angeles would pale in comparison to what was going to happen in Waco” (see December 7, 1992). Higgins goes on to say that during the 51-day siege, Koresh alluded to a previous plan to blow up the dam at Lake Waco, that Koresh wanted to provoke a confrontation with the BATF, and had at one point considered opening fire on a Waco restaurant to provoke just such a conflict. BATF Feared Mass Suicide - Higgins notes that the BATF, like the FBI, feared the possibility of “mass suicide” (see February 24-27, 1993, Around 4:00 p.m. February 28, 1993, March 5, 1993, March 7-8, 1993, March 12, 1993, (March 19, 1993), and March 23, 1993), and gives several examples of cults who have carried out just such mass suicides. Disputes Claims that BATF Fired First Shots - Higgins disputes the claims “that the Davidians were only defending themselves when they shot and killed four [B]ATF agents and wounded numerous others” during the February 1993 raid. He notes that investigations have shown that all four BATF agents were killed by Davidian gunfire (see February 2000) and not “friendly fire,” as some have alleged, and asks, “[W]hat possible excuse could there have been for the Davidians even taking up arms—let along using them—upon learning inadvertently from a TV cameraman that ATF agents were on their way to serve warrants?” Had the Davidians allowed the BATF agents to serve their warrants, “there would have been no subsequent loss of life on either side.” He goes on to say that it was the Davidians, not the BATF, who first opened fire, as a Treasury Department report has confirmed (see Late September - October 1993). He writes that for BATF agents to have merely “driven up to the compound and politely asked to conduct a search without displaying any firearms” would have been “dangerous and potentially suicidal.” Using Waco as an Excuse for Violence - Higgins concludes that people like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, do not decide to do violence to innocent people because of tragedies such as the Davidian incident, but “use it as an excuse for their behavior.” He notes that after the Oklahoma City bombing, someone called it a “damned good start.” He says perhaps the upcoming hearings on the Waco tragedy (see Late July 1995) might influence some of these people: “By seeing the faces of the survivors and reading their stories, maybe those who so vehemently rail against government authority in general, and government workers in particular, will come to understand better that those people they’ve been so quick to criticize have real faces and real families. They car-pool to work. They coach Little League sports. They mow their lawns. They’re the family next door that waters your plants and takes in your mail while you’re away. No one deserves to have their life placed in jeopardy simply because they work in, or happen to be passing by, a government office. And no one, not even law enforcement officers who get paid for risking their lives, deserves to be targeted by violent extremists threatening to kill them simply for doing their jobs.” For others, like radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy, who has advised his listeners to shoot BATF agents in the head because they wear bulletproof vests (see August 26 - September 15, 1994), “I doubt there’s much hope,” Higgins writes. He says that Liddy’s excuse that he was talking strictly about self-defense doesn’t wash; some angry and unstable individuals might well take Liddy’s words literally. Higgins compares Koresh to mass murderers such as Charles Manson and David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”), and concludes: “We can’t change the outcome of what happened at Waco, but we have a responsibility not to ignore simple fairness and compassion in our search for the truth. If there is to be another hearing on Waco, let’s hope it’s for the purpose of examining the facts and learning from the tragedy, not merely to please one more special interest group with an anti-government agenda.” [Washington Post, 7/2/1995]

Newsweek publishes a column by Colonel David Hackworth, who regularly writes on military matters for the magazine. Hackworth recently visited accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) in prison (see May 11, 1995). McVeigh and his lawyer Stephen Jones were featured in a recent issue of Newsweek as well (see June 26, 1995). Hackworth includes little of the actual words of the interview in this column, and spends most of his time giving his impression of McVeigh. He is ambivalent at best, lauding McVeigh’s military record and his ramrod-straight appearance, but speculative at best about McVeigh’s professed innocence. When he talked to McVeigh at the El Reno Federal Corrections Center, he writes, “I realized my gut feeling was right. He has what a lot of soldiers, good and bad, have: fire in the belly. When we talked about the military, a change came over him: McVeigh suddenly sat straight in his chair. The Army, he says, ‘teaches you to discover yourself. It teaches you who you are.’ I know what he means. To warriors, the military is like a religious order. It’s not a job. It’s a calling. Not too many people understand that calling or have what it takes.” Hackworth believes that after McVeigh returned from serving in Desert Storm (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990 and January - March 1991 and After), he “slipped into what’s known among vets as a postwar hangover[. I’ve] seen countless veterans, including myself, stumble home after the high-noon excitement of the killing fields, missing their battle buddies and the unique dangers and sense of purpose. Many lose themselves forever.” He notes that McVeigh voluntarily washed himself out of Special Forces training (see January - March 1991 and After), “but seemingly accepted his defeat stoically. Did his failure drive him over the edge? Maybe, but McVeigh says no: ‘It wasn’t the straw that broke anything.’ He planned to get in shape and come back. Still, something snapped.” Hackworth writes that McVeigh left the Army because of the postwar letdown and the Army’s “drawdown” of personnel (see November 1991 - Summer 1992), and was particularly troubled by his comrades leaving the service. He quotes McVeigh as saying, “You can literally love your battle buddies more than anyone else in the world.” Hackworth adds: “When they shipped out he was devastated, wondering if he’d made a mistake by staying in the military. Losing your war buddies is like losing an arm or a leg—or a loved one. McVeigh may have been crushed by the amputation.” From there, Hackworth writes, McVeigh “couldn’t adjust to civilian life,” and notes: “I’m no shrink, but I’ve seen this failure to adapt many times before. The rules change on you. You’re used to order—having a dear objective, knowing just how to get the job done. Then you’re on your own in a different world, with no structure and little exact sense of what you’re supposed to do.” None of this excuses or even explains the crimes McVeigh is accused of committing, he writes, and concludes: “The Timothy McVeigh I talked with didn’t seem like a baby killer. He was in high combat form, fully aware that his performance in the interview was almost a matter of life and death. If he’d been in combat, he’d have a medal for his coolness under fire. He might also be the most devious con man to ever come down the pike. At times McVeigh came across as the boy next door. But you might never want to let him into your house.” [Newsweek, 7/3/1995] Hackworth’s column contains much the same information he gave PBS’s Charlie Rose in a recent interview (see June 26, 1995). In a harsh critique of Hackworth’s military writing, Slate writers Charles Krohn and David Plotz will call his column on McVeigh “astonishingly sympathetic,” and will mock Hackworth’s “postwar hangover” explanation of McVeigh’s alleged bombing. [Slate, 11/28/1996] Although the interview is dated July 3, the issue of Newsweek containing it appears on June 26.

James Rosencrans, a former neighbor of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, and April 24, 1995), tells reporters that McVeigh’s friend, Michael Fortier (see May 19, 1995), attempted to make him an unwitting accomplice in a robbery that investigators believe was carried out to help finance the bombing (see November 5, 1994). Rosencrans, who has had at least one incident with law enforcement authorities as a result of the investigation into the bombing (see May 1, 1995), has turned over a rare rifle from the robbery to investigators, who believe accused co-conspirator Terry Nichols gave him the rifle (see Before July 3, 1995). Rosencrans has testified before the federal grand jury hearing evidence against McVeigh and Nichols. Fortier is also cooperating with authorities in return for reduced charges. The rare rifle, a customized Winchester .22-caliber, was given to Rosencrans along with two other firearms by Fortier, who once shared a trailer home with McVeigh next door to Rosencrans in Kingman, Arizona. “I believe he was trying to stick me with the rifle,” Rosencrans says. “I feel like I’m being played. I thought he was my friend.” Rosencrans says he knows “at least six people” in Kingman who had also gotten guns from Fortier. Rosencrans calls them “normal, everyday citizens,” who are “afraid of getting sucked in.” Rosencrans tells reporters that about a month before the bombing, McVeigh called Fortier to ask if Rosencrans could drive McVeigh for “maybe five or 10 hours” to an unspecified place and drop him off. Then, Rosencrans was to go to the nearest airport and “leave the car there.” Rosencrans recalls: “I said: ‘Leave the car there? What the hell for? Why don’t I just keep it?’” Rosencrans says he refused to drive McVeigh. [New York Times, 7/6/1995] Rosencrans tells reporters he fears he is the target of “a witch hunt” by federal agents whom, he says, are eager to implicate him in the bombing conspiracy. Of his grand jury testimony, he says the investigators “grilled me for four hours and then gave me four minutes on the stand. I went down there to help these guys. They treated me like a criminal, and then they ignored me when I got there.” The agents, he says, “are up to something.” He says he has refused to name anyone else who might have obtained guns from McVeigh or Fortier, and would continue to do so. “The Feds seem to think that there are 30 or 40 people involved in this thing, but they could just be somebody who happened to know somebody,” he says. “It’s a sad day in America when everything’s guilt by association.” [New York Times, 7/7/1995]

Federal prosecutors formally notify Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, and April 24, 1995) that they intend to seek the death penalty against him in his upcoming trial. Prosecutors send a letter to McVeigh’s lead lawyer, Stephen Jones, advising that McVeigh will be indicted before August 11 with “one or more crimes potentially punishable by death.” The letter is signed by Patrick M. Ryan, the US Attorney in Oklahoma City. Government officials, including President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, have said they would press for the death penalty against the person or persons responsible for the bombing (see 4:00 p.m., April 19, 1995 and April 22, 1995). The announcement ends speculation that the prosecution might take the death penalty off the table if McVeigh pleads guilty and cooperates with the investigation. While the prosecutors can seek the death penalty, only the trial jury can impose it, if it so chooses. Jones calls the decision to seek the death penalty a “charade,” saying that the decision was made by Clinton and Reno months ago. In a response to Ryan, Jones writes, “For us to reasonably believe that any type of fair review is to be conducted would require us to accept that you, as a nominee of the president for the position you hold, and the attorney general’s Capital Review Committee, appointed by Ms. Reno, would reach a decision and recommendation which overrides the president and the attorney general’s own public commitment.” Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to invoke the death penalty against McVeigh’s accused co-conspirator, Terry Nichols (see March 1995, April 16-17, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995, and June 23, 1995). Nichols’s attorney Michael Tigar says he is preparing his defense as if it will be a death-penalty case. [New York Times, 7/12/1995] Two days later, defense lawyers for Nichols inform reporters that the federal government will also seek the death penalty against Nichols. [New York Times, 7/14/1995]

Stephen Jones, the lead lawyer for accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, and April 24, 1995), says he will attempt to get McVeigh’s trial moved out of Oklahoma. McVeigh faces the death penalty if convicted of crimes related to the bombing (see July 11-13, 1995). Jones says he has in mind sites well away from Oklahoma City, including New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia, and the city of San Francisco. “These are places where there has been way less than the usual media coverage,” Jones says. “I haven’t been contacted by a single person from any of those states, in terms of the media.” US Attorney Patrick Ryan has said McVeigh and his accused co-conspirator, Terry Nichols (see March 1995, April 16-17, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995, and June 23, 1995), could get fair trials in Oklahoma, and that to move the trial would “further victimize the victims,” whose family members would likely testify during the sentencing phase of the trials if either or both are convicted. Jones says: “That is not a factor used in measuring where trials are held.… We have three criteria. The contents of what has been carried in the media in those states, the facilities to hold trials, and whether there was a nearby federal prison that could accommodate security concerns.… I definitely think we should not be in Oklahoma.” [New York Times, 7/18/1995]

Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, and April 24, 1995) refuses to give prosecutors a handwriting sample. He is transported from the El Reno Federal Corrections Center, about 25 miles west of Oklahoma City, to a courtroom in Oklahoma City, where he refuses to provide the sample. Prosecutors say the handwriting sample could be compared to a receipt for the rental of the Ryder truck used to plant the bomb (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). The courtroom, across the street from the targeted Murrah Federal Building, still has rough wooden plywood covers for many of its blown-out windows and is adorned with purple mourning ribbons. One man in the building wears a T-shirt that reads on the front, “In Memory, April 19, 1995.” The back reads, “A society that makes war against its police had better learn to make friends with its criminals.” McVeigh’s lawyer, Stephen Jones, argues that McVeigh should not have to provide a handwriting sample on the grounds that it may violate his rights against self-incrimination. Jones also says that McVeigh has written only in block letters since before joining the military in 1988 (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990), and that a handwriting sample in cursive letters would require more than a mechanical effort by his client. Prosecution assistant Sean Connelly reminds the court that the grand jury investigating the case has requested the sample, and calls it a “very routine” test. “We are not probing his mind or thought processes,” he says. “If he says he can’t spell ‘no,’ we’ll tell him N-O.” Judge David Russell finally rules that McVeigh will give the sample. “I’m going to order the defendant to comply with the subpoena of the grand jury,” he says. “I don’t see any reason to wait. The law is clear.” To McVeigh, he says, “Failure to comply could be used against you, not just in a contempt proceeding but as evidence in a trial.” When McVeigh again refuses to give the sample, Russell orders him charged with contempt of court and gives the defense five days to respond to the contempt charge. [New York Times, 7/19/1995]

Timothy McVeigh’s sister Jennifer McVeigh testifies before the federal grand jury investigating the Oklahoma City bombing. Her brother is charged with bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 24, 1995, and July 11-13, 1995). Her testimony clears her of any suspicion that she may have been involved in the conspiracy to bomb the building. “She’s not a target,” says her attorney, Joel Daniels. Jennifer McVeigh’s testimony is not made public. She has previously told the FBI that her brother told her he almost died in 1994 while driving a car loaded with explosives (see December 18, 1994). She has said that her brother asked her to take two $100 bills to a bank and exchange them for smaller amounts so he could get rid of money stolen in a bank robbery (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995). Prosecutors were expected to ask her about her brother’s expressed hatred toward the federal government (see Mid-December 1994) and about the contents of 20 letters he sent her, including one where he warned her about possible law enforcement surveillance. Some of the letters expressed McVeigh’s disgust and frustration with the handling of the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). After she completes her testimony and the grand jury declines to indict her, prosecutors give Jennifer McVeigh a grant of immunity for her testimony in her brother’s upcoming trial. [Washington Post, 8/3/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 242; Fox News, 4/13/2005] Witnesses in the court building say that when she leaves the grand jury chambers, she is in tears; court officers prevent reporters from attempting to question her as she runs into a restroom. Federal investigators have described her as polite but not forthcoming in previous interrogations. [New York Times, 8/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 242]

Stephen Jones, the attorney representing accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), says that an unidentified leg found in the rubble of the Murrah Federal Building might belong to “the real bomber.” [Indianapolis Star, 2003; Fox News, 4/13/2005] The leg and foot are clad in a combat boot. A medical examiner’s statement says in part: “This leg was clothed in a black military type boot, two socks, and an olive drab blousing strap. Anthropological analysis of this specimen reveals the individual to be light skinned, dark haired, probably less than 30 years of age, male (75 percent probability), and having an estimated height of 66 plus or minus three inches.” Examiner’s office official Ray Blackeney says that the leg was found on May 30, after the building was demolished (see 7:01 a.m. May 23, 1995). “I knew about it,” he says. “We all knew about it here at the Medical Examiner’s.” [New York Times, 8/7/1995; New York Times, 8/8/1995] Jones tells reporters: “There may be a logical explanation for the leg, but none comes to mind. There are no persons unaccounted for. It could have been a drifter nobody knows anything about. It could have been the individual that drove the vehicle used in the explosion. The third possibility is that this person was with the person driving [the vehicle].” [New York Times, 8/7/1995; Washington Post, 8/8/1995; New York Times, 8/8/1995] In late August, the examiner’s office will reveal that the leg belonged to an African-American female, contradicting portions of its earlier reporting. Frederick B. Jordan, the chief of the examiner’s office, will tell reporters, “DNA analysis by the FBI has shown conclusively that the left leg is not male but female.” Hair analysis has proven that the victim was African-American. Jones will tell reporters that the new information destroys any confidence one could have “in any of the forensic work in this case.” [New York Times, 8/31/1995] In February 1996, experts will determine that the leg belonged to a previously identified victim (see February 21, 1996 and February 24, 1996). [Fox News, 4/13/2005]

A federal grand jury indicts Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) on 11 counts of murder and conspiracy. Neither McVeigh nor Nichols are present during the hearing. The grand jury is only empowered to bring federal charges; the eight murder charges are in regards to the eight federal agents slain in the bombing: Secret Service agents Mickey Maroney, Donald Leonard, Alan Whicher, and Cynthia Campbell-Brown; DEA agent Kenneth McCullough; Customs Service agents Paul Ice and Claude Madearis; and Paul Broxterman, an agent in the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Both Nichols and McVeigh are expected to face 160 counts of murder brought by the state of Oklahoma; both will plead not guilty to all counts of the indictment (see August 15, 1995). The indictment levels the following charges: on September 30, 1994, McVeigh and Nichols purchased 40 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate (2,000 pounds in total, or one ton) in McPherson, Kansas, under the alias “Mike Havens” (see September 30, 1994); on October 1, 1994, McVeigh and Nichols stole explosives from a storage locker in Marion, Kansas (the actual date of the theft is October 3—see October 3, 1994); on October 3-4, 1994, McVeigh and Nichols transported the stolen explosives to Kingman, Arizona, and stored them in a rented storage unit (see October 4 - Late October, 1994); on October 18, 1994, McVeigh and Nichols bought another ton of ammonium nitrate in McPherson, Kansas, again using the “Mike Havens” alias (see October 18, 1994); in October 1994, McVeigh and Nichols planned the robbery of a firearms dealer in Arkansas as a means to finance the bombing, and on November 5 they “caused” firearms, ammunition, coins, cash, precious metals, and other items to be stolen from gun dealer Roger Moore (see November 5, 1994); on December 16, 1994, McVeigh drove with Michael Fortier to Oklahoma City and identified the Murrah Federal Building as the target of the upcoming bombing (see December 16, 1994 and After); in March 1995 McVeigh obtained a driver’s license in the name of “Robert Kling,” bearing a date of birth of April 19, 1972 (see Mid-March, 1995); on April 14, 1995, McVeigh bought a 1977 Mercury Marquis in Junction City, Kansas, called Nichols in Herington, Kansas, used the “Kling” alias to set up the rental of a Ryder truck capable of transporting 5,000 pounds of cargo, and rented a room in Junction City (see April 13, 1995); on April 15, 1995, McVeigh put down a deposit on a rental truck under the name of “Robert Kling” (see April 15, 1995); on April 17, 1995, McVeigh took possession of the rental truck in Junction City (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995); on April 18, 1995, at Geary Lake State Park in Kansas, McVeigh and Nichols constructed the truck bomb using barrels filled with ammonium nitrate, fuel, and other explosives, and placed the cargo in the compartment of the Ryder truck (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995); on April 19, 1995, McVeigh parked the truck bomb directly outside the Murrah Building during regular business hours; and on April 19, 1995, McVeigh “caused the truck bomb to explode” (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). The indictment accuses McVeigh and Nichols of plotting the bombing “with others unknown to the Grand Jury.” It does not mention the person identified earlier as “John Doe No. 2” (see June 14, 1995). The grand jury says it is confident others, as yet unidentified, also participated in the plot. Lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler says: “The indictment mentions unknown co-conspirators. We will try to determine if there are others who aided and abetted this crime.” After the indictments are handed down, Attorney General Janet Reno says: “We will pursue every lead based on the evidence.… [M]ost of these leads have been pursued and exhausted.… [W]e have charged everyone involved that we have evidence of at this point.” Prosecutors say that while others may well have been involved, the plot was closely held between McVeigh and Nichols. US Attorney Patrick Ryan has already announced he will seek the death penalty against both McVeigh and Nichols (see July 11-13, 1995), a decision supported by Reno (see 4:00 p.m., April 19, 1995). A third conspirator, Michael Fortier, has pled guilty to lesser crimes regarding his involvement; Fortier has testified against McVeigh and Nichols in return for the lesser charges (see May 19, 1995 and August 8, 1995), and defense lawyers are expected to assail Fortier’s credibility during the trials (see April 19, 1995 and After, April 23 - May 6, 1995, and May 8, 1995). Nichols’s lawyer Michael Tigar says, “Terry Nichols is not guilty of the allegations of which he is charged,” calls the case against his client “flimsy” and “irresponsible,” and accuses prosecutors of attempting to try his client “in the national media.” Periodically, Tigar holds up hand-lettered signs reading, among other messages, “Terry Nichols Wasn’t There” and “A Fair Trial in a Fair Forum.” Prosecutors have dropped all charges against Nichols’s brother James Nichols, who was indicted on three related explosive charges (see December 22 or 23, 1988, April 25, 1995, and May 11, 1995). US Attorney Saul A. Green says that “additional investigation failed to corroborate some of the important evidence on which the government initially relied.” [Washington Post, 8/11/1995; New York Times, 8/11/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 189-191; Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 811; Washington Post, 12/24/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 245; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] McVeigh’s lawyer, Stephen Jones, tells reporters after the hearing that he has been in contact with a man who, he says, told the government early in the fall of 1994 of plans to blow up federal buildings. This man, Jones says, was given a “letter of immunity” by the authorities in exchange for information involving a trip he had taken to Kingman, Arizona, Fortier’s hometown, and for information about his discussions with potential bombers whom, Jones says, the man had described as either “Latin American or Arab.” Jones refuses to identify the person to whom he is referring. [New York Times, 8/11/1995]

Evidence in the case against accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) indicates that McVeigh was inspired largely by two books: a well-known favorite among white supremacists, the William Pierce novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978) and a second non-fiction book, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right, by Chicago Tribune reporter James Coates. Coates wrote the book to warn against the dangers of far-right militia groups. McVeigh also drew inspiration for the bombing from the exploits of The Order, a far-right organization that staged armored car robberies (see April 19-23, 1984), murdered progressive radio host Alan Berg (see June 18, 1984 and After), and finally ceased operations when federal authorities killed its leader, Robert Jay Mathews, in a fiery shootout (see December 8, 1984). The Coates book, checked out from a library in Kingman, Arizona, by McVeigh, was found among other evidence seized from the Kansas home of his co-conspirator, Terry Nichols (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995 and April 24, 1995). A Kingman librarian says the book has been overdue for so long that it was purged from the library’s computer database. A person closely involved in the case tells a reporter that McVeigh had cited Chapter 2 of the Coates book, which describes how The Order grew from a small collection of bumblers into a heavily armed, well-financed terrorist cadre that used the proceeds of crimes to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to other far-right groups and buy land, guns, vehicles, and guard dogs. As for The Turner Diaries, a person involved in the case calls it McVeigh’s “Bible.” The Order viewed the Pierce novel as required reading, and used the exploits of the white supremacists in it to inspire and guide their own criminal activities. The Oklahoma City bombing closely mirrors the bombing of FBI headquarters in the Pierce novel; in the book, white revolutionaries use a truck filled with an explosive combination of fertilizer and fuel oil to destroy the building. The book calls the FBI bombing “propaganda of the deed,” an exemplary act meant to inspire others to strike their own blows. The McVeigh and Nichols indictments cite the two books, along with a prepaid telephone card issued by The Spotlight, an anti-Semitic newspaper issued by the white supremacist Liberty Lobby (see August 1994). According to Nichols’s defense team, Nichols had withdrawn from the bomb plot in March 1995 (see March 1995 and May 25 - June 2, 1995), and McVeigh showed close friends the copy of the Coates book, directing them to read the chapter on The Order, in what they say was an attempt to solicit others to help him carry out the bomb plot. [New York Times, 8/21/1995]

Prosecutors in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) consider using an obscure charge, “misprison of felony,” to force others who may have knowledge of the bombing plot to come forward. Investigators are sure that only two men, Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) and Terry Nichols (see March 1995, April 16-17, 1995, 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995, 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995, and June 23, 1995), are primarily responsible for the bombing. However, they suspect that a number of friends and associates of the two men may have known something of the bombing plot before it was carried out. If someone did know of the plot, and failed to warn authorities beforehand, the charge may apply. One person close to McVeigh, state witness Michael Fortier (see August 8, 1995), faces the charge. The charge brings a three-year prison sentence and a $500 fine upon conviction. One person of interest is the alleged associate of McVeigh and Nichols who they believe actually carried out a November 1994 robbery in Arkansas (see November 5, 1994); the proceeds from that robbery were used to fund the bombing. Press reports say that while the FBI believes it knows who the robber is, the bureau lacks the evidence to bring charges. The question of the unidentified severed leg found in the rubble of the destroyed Murrah Federal Building (see August 7, 1995) also indicates that others may have been involved in the bombing. And investigators say they want to know more about a small trailer hitched to the Ryder truck McVeigh used to transport the bomb to Oklahoma City (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). Former federal prosecutor Robert G. McCampbell says charging friends or acquaintances of suspects with misprision of felony would be highly unusual: “It is exceedingly rare that a charge of misprision of felony would be brought, but not unheard of,” he says. “But in a case of overwhelming importance, maybe you prosecute it.” Legal experts also believe that investigators may use the threat of the charge to compel cooperation. New York defense lawyer Michael Kennedy, who has represented Mafia members, says: “When the government casts this net, they’re saying, ‘We want to get everybody who knew about this.’ Their hope, in this regard, is that people will read about this, say to themselves, ‘I knew about it, and if I don’t come forward, it will be too late for me to improve my position.’ They hope that some others will come forward.… They say, ‘Tell us what you know, or we’re going to nail you.’ They attempt, by dint of their force, to make the guy come forward to tell what he knew.” Former New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who oversaw the 1993 World Trade Center bombing investigation (see February 26, 1993), says, “It’s a standard investigative technique.” The threat of such charges “gets a very strong message out” to “prevent further acts like that.” [New York Times, 8/29/1995]

In a letter to US Attorney Patrick Ryan, Attorney General Janet Reno authorizes prosecutors to seek the death penalty against indicted Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, 4:00 p.m., April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995). The prosecutors promptly inform the federal court in Oklahoma City that they will do just that. Reno overrides protests from defense lawyers asking her to disqualify herself from the proceedings; McVeigh’s lawyer, Stephen Jones, told reporters that Reno and President Clinton both said “they would seek the death penalty before they even knew who the defendants were. We will mount our attack on the obvious prejudgment of the case.” Ryan says the prosecution will seek the death penalty on four of the counts lodged against McVeigh and Nichols: first-degree murder, conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction with death resulting, using an explosive to destroy government property with death resulting, and using a weapon of mass destruction with death resulting. He says “aggravating factors” include the maiming, disfigurement, and other injuries inflicted on many individuals and the involvement of both defendants in “acts of burglary, robbery, and theft to finance and otherwise facilitate” the bombing. Governor Frank Keating (R-OK) approves of the decision, and recently said in an interview that it was not at all unusual “to see the president and the attorney general express their outrage” when they did. “This was an enormous national tragedy of titanic proportions,” Keating said. “The question is, are these [McVeigh and Nichols] the people who did it? If not, we need to find those who did.… But we want whoever did this to be prosecuted, convicted, and executed.” [New York Times, 8/21/1995; Washington Post, 10/21/1995; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] Jones refused to take part in the panel discussions over the use of the death penalty, calling them a fraud and a sham, and saying that the process should not have been conducted by the Justice Department. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 253]

Hoppy Heidelberg. [Source: Digital Style Designs]Prosecutors in the Oklahoma City bombing case (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) say that the recent dismissal of juror Hoppy Heidelberg from the investigation’s federal grand jury does not warrant throwing out indictments against the two suspects, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Heidelberg was dismissed from the jury after disclosing information about the jury deliberations with Lawrence Myers, a reporter from Media Bypass, a magazine with ties to paramilitary groups. He also spoke to a reporter from the Daily Oklahoman. Heidelberg. a horse breeder from Blanchard, Oklahoma, told the reporters that prosecutors did not present enough evidence concerning the possibility of a larger conspiracy, and that they refused grand jury requests to interview witnesses and ask questions about such a larger conspiracy. Heidelberg may face contempt charges, as jurors are legally prohibited from revealing details of the cases they hear. Special US Attorney Sean Connelly calls Heidelberg’s concerns part of “his own conspiracy theories that predated this crime by decades.” Transcriptions from the magazine also show that Myers exaggerated and inflated Heidelberg’s complaints in the article. Heidelberg does not contend that the indictments of McVeigh and Nichols are unwarranted, though he says that he and other members of the grand jury are suspicious of the government’s case. Defense lawyers have asked that their clients have charges against them dropped because of what they call “prosecutorial misconduct” surrounding Heidelberg’s actions. Asked by reporters about charges that he is a conspiracy theorist, Heidelberg laughs and responds: “The people that know me know better. The people that don’t are going to have to wait to decide.” [New York Times, 10/14/1995; United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, 10/24/1995; Associated Press, 11/1/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 255] Heidelberg will later win a certain degree of fame as a “9/11 truther,” one of a group of theorists that believe the US government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, or at the least were complicit in them. The article discussing Heidelberg will also cite theories saying that two separate explosions struck the Murrah Building (see After 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) and that an Oklahoma City police officer, Terry Yeakey, was “suicided,” i.e. murdered in a manner that appeared to be a suicide, after supposedly beginning to “express his concerns” that the government was hiding evidence of its collusion in the bombing. Yeakey’s death is one of a “slew of deaths” that have supposedly occurred to cover up the government’s role in the bombing, according to Heidelberg. Heidelberg will also release a video “proving” that the grand jury “was manipulated and obstructed” by the government. [Wendy Bird, 6/10/2008; Wide Eye Cinema, 2011]

Magistrate Ronald Howland, presiding over the preliminary matters in the upcoming trial of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), unseals nine documents in response to petitions from news organizations. One of these documents says two witnesses saw a man they believed to be McVeigh and another person leave the scene of the bombing shortly before the April 19 attack. The document is an affidavit that is part of a search warrant. Another document says that McVeigh was carrying a pamphlet with a quote from 17th-century philosopher John Locke when he was arrested (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). The quote reads: “I have no reason to suppose that he who would take away my liberty would not when he had men in his power take away everything else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself in a state of war against me and kill him if I can.” [Reuters, 11/6/1995]

Stephen Jones, the lead lawyer for accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), says his client will not use an insanity defense when he goes on trial. “The psychiatric and psychological evaluations aren’t 100 percent completed, but from what we know at this point we have no reason to assert a mental defect,” Jones tells reporters. “He’s as sane as any lawyer or reporter.” McVeigh has been pronounced competent by Dr. Seymour Halleck, a University of North Carolina psychiatrist hired by Jones. McVeigh is also being examined by other experts. “There is no mental defect,” Jones tells an audience at the University of Oklahoma, an audience that includes reporters from the Daily Oklahoman. “We’re not pleading insanity, incompetency, or anything like that. It’s a straight, factual defense. I have said he would testify. That’s the present plan.” Jones also accuses Clinton administration members of pushing for a quick conviction and execution before the 1996 presidential election. “This offers [those in] the Clinton administration the opportunity to prove themselves or attempt to prove themselves as tough on crime,” Jones says. In 1996, author and reporter Brandon M. Stickney will write that some of Jones’s comments during the speech seem to mirror McVeigh’s own conspiratorial, anti-government thinking. [Chicago Sun-Times, 11/17/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 258-260]

Robert Nigh Jr. [Source: Associated Press]Defense lawyers for accused Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and July 11-13, 1995) ask that their clients’ trials be moved from Oklahoma due to intense media coverage from the bombing. The lawyers say that the media coverage has irredeemably tainted the jury pool. Oklahoma citizens are too close to the case, the lawyers argue, for either McVeigh or Nichols to receive a fair trial. The case is currently slated to be tried in Lawton, Oklahoma, some 85 miles away from Oklahoma City. One of McVeigh’s lawyers, Robert Nigh Jr., says: “We do not question for a moment that the people of Lawton or the people of Oklahoma are as fair as people anywhere in the country. They are simply too close in this case to determine the facts objectively.” Polls administered by two Houston researchers show that Lawton residents are far more familiar with the details of the case than residents of two other cities, Albuquerque and Kansas City, Kansas, and care more deeply about the case. All three cities are part of the Tenth Circuit. The polls say that almost half of Lawton residents have formed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of McVeigh, and 96 percent of them believe him to be guilty. The numbers for Nichols are 30 percent and 90 percent, respectively. McVeigh’s lawyers state in a court filing: “The fevered passion of the community of Oklahoma has been escalated by local news reports concerning the case. Timothy McVeigh has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by the media in Oklahoma.” [New York Times, 11/22/1995; Fox News, 4/13/2005] The trial will be moved to Denver, Colorado (see February 20, 1996).

Richard P. Matsch. [Source: Washington Post]The Tenth Circuit of Appeals removes Oklahoma District Judge Wayne E. Alley from the Oklahoma City bombing case (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), and assigns US District Judge Richard P. Matsch of Denver to preside over the trial. [New York Times, 12/5/1995; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] “We conclude that a reasonable person could not help but harbor doubts about the impartiality of Judge Alley,” the court rules. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 261] Alley’s offices were damaged in the blast, as was the entire courthouse, which stands less than 1,000 feet from the Murrah Building. Alley had a staff member injured in the bombings, and at least 33 of the victims conducted business regularly in the courthouse. Some judges helped in the rescue efforts; some judges attended as many as seven funerals. An employee in the court clerk’s office lost her child in the blast, and many court employees were injured either in the blast itself or in the aftermath. Fundraising drives for the victims and their families were held in the courthouse, and a popular T-shirt being sold features a law enforcement badge and the inscription, “In Memory, April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City.” The appeals court feels Alley risks having his impartiality questioned, and notes that both prosecuting and defense attorneys have requested his removal. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 254; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] In his request for Alley’s removal, defense lawyer Stephen Jones told reporters: “Judge Alley has a distinguished military, professional, and judicial career. Anyone who appears before him has the highest respect for him personally and professionally. However, our belief is that a victim of a traumatic incident cannot sit as a judge in a trial where the person accused of creating the incident is on trial. No one of us would want to be judged by such an individual.” [New York Times, 8/23/1995] US Attorney Patrick M. Ryan also asked that Alley step aside. In court papers, Ryan noted that there was no legal requirement that he do so, but stated that “[i]t is of paramount importance that the nation have complete confidence in the integrity of the verdict ultimately reached in this case, and that partisan detractors not be permitted—however wrongly—to raise questions about judicial fairness. There is too much at stake here to risk even an erroneous reversal, with all its attendant costs to the people of the United States, and most importantly, to the victims of this terrible crime. Failure to recuse could cause delay, uncertainty, and unwarranted focus on a matter that is collateral to the overriding issue of these defendants’ guilt or innocence.” [New York Times, 9/9/1995] Alley, who unsuccessfully fought to keep the case, wrote in a court filing regarding his removal, “The judge who succeeds to this case will have to bear a dreadful burden, and I wish him or her well.” Matsch has experience in similar trials; in 1987, he presided over the civil rights trial of four members of the white supremacist group The Order, who murdered progressive radio talk show host Alan Berg (see June 18, 1984 and After). He is known as a stickler for punctuality and order in his courtroom, brooking little nonsense from lawyers on either side of the case. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors white supremacist and military groups, calls Matsch’s selection “poetic justice.” Defense lawyers for both Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols say they are comfortable with Matsch presiding over the trials of their clients. [New York Times, 12/5/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 255]

A New York Times analysis of indicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) uses an interview with FBI profiler Jack Douglas to paint a picture of McVeigh as a burgeoning serial killer. Douglas, the model for the FBI analyst in the movie The Silence of the Lambs, describes McVeigh as an underachieving loner whose stunted social development, obsessive neatness, inability to deal with his abandonment by his mother, sexual frustration, obsession with guns, and overarching alienation led him to conceive and execute a plot that killed scores of innocent people. “There are the same kind of characteristics” in McVeigh’s makeup as serial killers possess, Douglas says. “Asocial, asexual, a loner, withdrawn, from a family with problems, strong feelings of inadequacy from early in life, an underachiever.” McVeigh did well in the highly structured environment of the US Army (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990 and January - March 1991 and After), Douglas notes, but was unable to function successfully outside of that environment (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). His lifelong obsession with guns (see 1987-1988) blended with his increasing fascination with far-right militia, white supremacist, and separatist ideologies that led him to believe the government was actively plotting to disarm and repress its citizenry. McVeigh, always fascinated with computers, used the burgeoning network of computerized bulletin boards, email clients, videotape exchanges, shortwave radio broadcasts, and other information resources to fuel his beliefs, all codified in what Times reporter John Kifner calls “a venomous novel called The Turner Diaries” (see 1978) that depicts rebel white supremacists overthrowing the federal government and committing genocide against minority citizens. Apocalyptic World View Triggered by Events - McVeigh’s increasingly apocalyptic world view, Douglas says, led him to carry out the bomb plot, perhaps in an effort to bring about the same supremacist rebellion that The Turner Diaries depicts. The federal raids on Randy Weaver’s cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (see August 31, 1992), and the Branch Davidian compound in Texas (see April 19, 1993), the passage of the Brady gun control bill (see November 30, 1993), and the birth of the paramilitary militia movement (see August 1994 - March 1995) all spurred McVeigh forward. Kifner writes: “The paramilitary movement vowed to resist the government and publish manuals on forming underground guerrilla squads. Mr. McVeigh was just a little ahead of the curve.” The final straw for McVeigh, Kifner and Douglas theorize, was the passage of the August 1994 crime bill that outlawed 19 types of semiautomatic assault weapons (see September 13, 1994). Shortly thereafter, McVeigh wrote an angry letter to his friend Michael Fortier alerting him that he intended to take some sort of “positive action” against the government (see September 13, 1994). Shared Inadequacies - Douglas calls McVeigh’s “obsession with weapons” an “overcompensation for deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy.… They compensate for a while by talking the talk, but after a while they have to go out and do something about it. Typically the time for violence is in the mid-20s. They look in the mirror and see they’re going nowhere fast. This is an easily controlled and manipulated personality. They are looking for something to hang their hat on, some ideology. They have difficulty fitting into groups, but they are more mission-oriented, more focused.” Seattle forensic psychiatrist Kenneth Muscatel has called this type of personality disorder “Smerdyakov syndrome,” after the scorned half-brother in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, who listens to the other brothers inveigh against their father until, finally, he murders the father. Douglas notes the devoted friendship between McVeigh and indicted co-conspirator Terry Nichols, another underachieving loner who did well in the Army. “These two are birds of a feather,” Douglas says. “Each feeds off the other’s inadequacies.” Of McVeigh, Douglas says: “These people are comfortable in a structured environment, they do very well. But outside of a structured environment, without that rigidity, he just can’t survive. On the other hand, he’s probably doing fine now in jail. I bet they would say he’s a model prisoner.” 'Red Dawn' and the Militia Movement - McVeigh’s favorite movie is, by all accounts, a 1984 film called Red Dawn that depicts a group of Texas high school football players banding together to defeat an invasion of Soviet paratroopers. The “Wolverines,” as the footballers term themselves, transform themselves into a polished, lethal guerrilla force. The film contains a number of tropes that resonate with McVeigh and other militia sympathizers: the use of gun-registration forms to enable the Soviet invasion, political leaders eager to betray the American citizenry they represent, and others. The film is a cult classic among militia members. Along with another extraordinarily popular series of movies, the Rambo films, Red Dawn expresses what sociologist James William Gibson has noted is a new perspective on military veterans and popular culture; whereas traditional war movies show raw recruits uniting to battle an evil enemy on behalf of a just national cause, post-Vietnam movies such as Red Dawn and the Rambo films popularize the archetype of an alienated loner or small band of outlaws, betrayed by their own government and fighting for their view of the American ideal as renegades. Another favorite film of McVeigh’s is a very different offering, the 1985 black comedy Brazil, which depicts an Orwellian future dominated by an all-powerful bureaucracy. Actor Robert DeNiro plays a commando-like “outlaw repairman”; his character’s name is “Tuttle,” one of the aliases used by McVeigh (see April 19, 1993 and After, October 12, 1993 - January 1994, December 1993, February - July 1994, and May 12, 1995). The last movie McVeigh rented before the Oklahoma City bombing was Blown Away, the tale of a mad bomber. 'The Turner Diaries', Gun Regulation, and the Militia Movement - Kifner notes that much has been made of McVeigh’s fascination with William Pierce’s novel The Turner Diaries. McVeigh was an avid reader, paging through mercenary and gun magazines, white supremacist and anti-Semitic newsletters and fliers, and an array of apocalyptic and war novels. One of the more unusual works found in McVeigh’s possessions is a document titled “Operation Vampire Killer 2000,” written by militia leader Jack McLamb and predicting a “globalist,” “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) takeover of the US by “the year 2000.” The document names the plotters against American democracy as, among others, the Order of the Illuminati, international bankers, the United Nations, the “Rothschild Dynasty,” the Internal Revenue Service, CBS News, Communists, the Yale secret society Skull and Bones, “humanist wackos,” and, possibly, aliens from outer space in Unidentified Flying Objects. McLamb writes: “For the World Elite to truly enjoy their ‘utopian’ Socialist Society, the subject masses must not have the means to protect themselves against more ‘voluntary compliance.’ When one grasps this logical position, there is no longer any question about it: THE GUNS WILL HAVE TO GO.” But The Turner Diaries was, according to one person involved in the investigation, McVeigh’s “Bible” (see August 20, 1995). As with so much of McVeigh’s reading material, Turner posited the forcible confiscation of citizen-owned guns by the US government as the presage to tyranny. In a book on the paramilitary movement, Kenneth Stern wrote: “Those who would regulate guns were cast as tyrants who were coming for people’s guns first. The government had to disarm citizens in order to subjugate them. The United Nations could march in and take over America; loyal Americans could be sent to concentration camps.” Both McVeigh and the paramilitary movement were “developing in the same time line,” Stern tells Kifner. “I would date the first functioning militia as February of 1994 in Montana, and then spreading to Michigan and other places” (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994). McVeigh and Nichols were apparently influenced by the writings of former Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam, who advocated a “leaderless resistance” of tiny, independent cells that “state tyranny” would find more difficult to control (see February 1992). “No one need issue an order to anyone,” Beam wrotes. “These idealists truly committed to the cause of freedom will act when they feel the time is ripe, or will take their cues from others who proceed them.” In Pierce’s novel, a bombing almost exactly like the Oklahoma City blast is carried out by the novel’s hero Earl Turner; the novel’s bombing destroys the FBI headquarters in Washington and inspires a nationwide revolt by white supremacists against the “tyrannical” government. It is conceivable, Kifner concludes, that McVeigh’s bomb was intended to strike the same sort of blow, and perhaps evoke the same results. [New York Times, 12/31/1995]

The defense in the trial of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) presents evidence in one of the hearings conducted to consider a change of venue in the trial (see November 21, 1995). The hearing takes place at the Oklahoma City courthouse; McVeigh has been brought from his cell at the El Reno federal detention facility to take part, though he says nothing during the proceedings. The defense plays clips from television news broadcasts, some of which contain erroneous information; footage of tearful calls for McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols to be executed; coverage of memorial services for the victims of the bombing; and promises by President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating that the death penalty would be sought. In the back of the courtroom, victims’ family members begin weeping. An Associated Press report by Paul Queary notes that McVeigh “smiled” as the films were shown; Los Angeles Times reporter Richard A. Serrano will write that McVeigh “appeared relaxed and at ease in court.” The reports anger McVeigh’s sister Jennifer, who has driven from Pendleton, New York, to be with her brother in court. She later says: “He wasn’t smiling in reference to anything. He was smiling at me. And you know that if he wasn’t smiling, they’d criticize him and if he was smiling, they’d criticize him. You know what happened the last time when he wasn’t smiling.” She is referring to the iconic image of a grim-looking McVeigh squinting as he is “perp walked” on the day of his arrest (see April 21, 1995). Jennifer tells reporters after the hearing: “No matter what, he’s still my brother and I’m still going to be there for him. He’s just a normal person. He’s not this evil thing they’ve painted him.” She visits him at the city jail before returning to her hotel room and calling her father in Pendleton. She will begin the long drive back to Pendleton a few days later. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 268-270]

Stephen Jones, the lead defense lawyer for indicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), asks the court to subpoena four men that Jones says may have information about the bombing. The subpoenas are in response to a $30 million wrongful-death lawsuit filed against McVeigh by Edye Smith, who lost her two sons in the blast. Jones wants to depose three members of the neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP): John Tyndall, David Irving, and Charles Sergeant. He also wants to depose Dennis Mahon, a Tulsa resident who heads the regional chapter of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a white separatist organization. Jones says he wants to know if the three BNP members supplied Mahon with a detonator that may have been used in the bombing. Jones also says that Mahon has told his staffers that he is an explosives expert and had bombed buildings in the past. Mahon denies making these claims, but affirms that Interpol considers him an international terrorist and has denied him admission to Great Britain. Jones says of Mahon, “The FBI has interviewed thousands of people in connection with this case yet they didn’t interview an international terrorist living just 90 miles away.” Jones has hired a London legal firm to pursue leads that suggest international connections in the bombing. Mahon has said he knew McVeigh from 1993 and 1994, when McVeigh traveled around the country selling weapons and items at gun shows (see April 19, 1993 and After). An informant has also told federal officials that Mahon may have been involved in a bombing plot targeting an Oklahoma City federal building (see August 1994 - March 1995 and November 1994). Jones also sends defense team researcher Ann Bradley to Amsterdam to talk with a lawyer for Daniel Spiegelman, a US citizen being held by Dutch authorities on a charge of “trading in stolen manuscripts,” and who faces extradition to the US for weapons smuggling and falsifying passports. The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf runs a story noting the “resemblance” Spiegelman bears to the bombing suspect identified as “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995). Jones tells reporters: “We are certainly pursuing an investigation of that line and have been for some months. The attorney general herself [Janet Reno] said the FBI would certainly be justified to look at a European connection. We believe that the evidence may suggest a broader, deeper, more sophisticated conspiracy.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 264, 271; Associated Press, 2/10/1996]

Jennifer McVeigh, the sister of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), is featured in an interview segment aired on Dateline NBC. She was interviewed by Jane Pauley, who spoke with her at a Buffalo, New York, hotel a few days ago. Jennifer tells Pauley about her earlier statements to the FBI (see April 21-23, 1995), saying: “I think he knows I really didn’t have a choice, but… I still wonder, still have a lot of guilt. I talked to them and maybe I somehow hurt him. That’s really the biggest thing that bothers me every day—that I love my brother to death and want nothing more than to support him and be on your side. Yet I really had no choice and if I get called to testify, it will be for the prosecution. It’s tough. You’ll be in trouble if you don’t talk to them, or you talk to them and you’re going to get your brother in trouble.” Jennifer’s statements to Pauley probably do more harm than good to her brother’s chances in court, according to reporter and author Brandon M. Stickney. She echoes her brother’s anger at the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After), which the prosecution will argue was one of McVeigh’s driving rationales for carrying out the bombing. And she likely angers viewers, Stickney will write, by imploring the American people to try to “understand” the reasons behind the bombing, saying, “I think [the bombing] is evil in a sense that a lot of people… lives were torn apart, a lot of people died… innocent people.” After conferring with Richard Burr, a lawyer for her brother, she continues, “I think the act itself was a tragedy for everyone involved, but maybe there’s some sort of explanation to be had—I really don’t think anything could justify the consequences—just understanding would help.” Burr attended the interview and confered with Jennifer before she answered Pauley’s questions. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 271-272]

Judge Richard Matsch (see December 1, 1995), citing the defendants’ right to an impartial jury in the Oklahoma City bombing trial (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, August 10, 1995, and November 21, 1995), moves the trial from Oklahoma City to Denver, Colorado. Matsch is the Chief Judge of the Federal District Court in Colorado, and is essentially moving the case to his “home” courtroom. Matsch rules that because of intensive negative media coverage of the bombing, neither Timothy McVeigh nor Terry Nichols can receive fair trials in Oklahoma City. “This court… concludes that there is so great a prejudice against these two defendants in the State of Oklahoma that they cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial at any place… in that state,” Matsch writes. McVeigh and Nichols have been “demonized” in the press, he continues. “The intensity of the humanization of the victims in the public mind is in sharp contrast with the prevalent portrayals of the defendants.… [T]he interests of the victims in being able to attend this trial in Oklahoma are outweighed by the court’s obligation to assure that the trial be conducted with fundamental fairness and with due regard for all constitutional requirements.” McVeigh’s attorney, Stephen Jones, says, “The judge examined all the evidence and saw that Oklahoma sees itself as the victims and that makes it difficult to get a fair trial here.” Prosecutors agreed that Oklahoma City was not the proper venue for the trial, but had asked that the trial be moved to Tulsa, only two hours from Oklahoma City; US Attorney Patrick Ryan, newly appointed by President Clinton to represent the Oklahoma City district, argued that moving the trial would present an undue hardship on the families of the victims who want to observe the trial. Attorney General Janet Reno says the government “does not have the right” to appeal Matsch’s decision and therefore is ready to move to trial “expeditiously.” Reno says the Justice Department would “pursue every means available to provide survivors and loved ones with an opportunity to observe and follow events in the courtroom.” Kathleen Treanor, who lost her daughter and her in-laws in the bombing, is angry with the decision, saying she had intended to go to the trials: “It stinks. Judge Matsch will not have to give up his bed or leave his home. He is inconvenienced in no way. I lost my only daughter and I won’t be able to afford to go.” But Toby Thompson, who lost his brother in the bombing, says: “It is very important that the trial be squeaky clean. If moving it to Nova Scotia would ensure that I wouldn’t have to go through it twice, that would be fine with me.” Legal experts say Matsch made the decision in order to obviate any possibility that the defense would use the venue of the trial as the basis for a possible appeal. Governor Frank Keating (R-OK) criticizes the decision, saying Matsch moved the trial to Denver “for his personal comfort.… It is easier for him to go home and sleep in his own bed. That’s what his decision says to the hundreds and thousands of people impacted in this bombing. Its wrong on the facts and it’s wrong on the law.” Keating says he will coordinate with Governor Roy Romer (D-CO) and Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, as well as the federal government, to fund transport and housing for relatives and friends of the victims who wish to attend the trials. [Washington Post, 2/21/1996; New York Times, 2/21/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 256; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] Chicago jury consultant Joe Guaftaferro says of the venue change: “Colorado, from a jury perspective, could be risky. There’s a lot of white supremacists in those hills.” Public affairs law professor Rita Simon, an expert on the effects of publicity on a jury, says she agrees with Matsch’s decision, and adds, “With proper instruction, jurors could put aside any pretrial prejudice they may have picked up as a result of publicity about the case.” [New York Times, 2/22/1996]

Lawyers on both sides of the upcoming Oklahoma City bombing trial (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) agree to exhume the body of one of the 168 victims of the blast. The agreement to exhume the body of Lakesha Levy, an Air Force member killed in the explosion, is to determine whether the unidentified leg found in the rubble (see August 7, 1995) belongs to Levy. Defense lawyers for accused bomber Timothy McVeigh had at one time speculated that the leg might belong to “the real bomber,” but after DNA tests proved it belonged to an African-American female, those speculations ceased. Levy is buried in a New Orleans graveyard. Prosecutors say that their records show eight of the bombing victims were buried without their left legs. It is possible, they say, that Levy was buried with someone else’s leg. Levy’s body will be sent to an FBI forensics laboratory for investigation. [New York Times, 2/28/1996] The leg will be conclusively identified as Levy’s (see February 24, 1996).

The unidentified leg found in the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing (see August 7, 1995 and February 21, 1996) belongs to Airman Lakesha Levy, according to DNA tests carried out by FBI forensic scientists. The FBI also uses footprints from the leg to identify it as Levy’s. Levy was buried with a severed leg belonging to another, as-yet-unidentified bombing victim. Stephen Jones, the lead defense attorney for indicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), says that the prosecution’s forensic evidence “appears to be moving in different directions like a weather vane in an Oklahoma stormy spring.” State medical examiner Frederick B. Jordan says his office made three mistakes in identifying Levy’s remains: burying the wrong leg with her, erroneously reporting that the wrong leg was still attached to the body, and erroneously reporting that Levy was found with a combat boot on her left foot. Jordan says the errors may refer to Levy’s right leg, not the severed left leg. The FBI has not yet identified the victim whose leg was buried with Levy. [Associated Press, 2/24/1996] The leg buried with Levy will never be identified. In 1999, it will be buried with honors, along with an assortment of other unidentified fragments and tissue remnants from the bomb site, in a memorial garden on the Oklahoma City capitol grounds. [Amarillo Globe-News, 12/11/1999]

The reaction among various militia and anti-government groups to the standoff between the FBI and the Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996) is mixed. Some militia and “common law” (see Fall 2010) organizations issue statements in favor of the Freemen, warning that the FBI will cause another bloody debacle similar to those experienced at Ruby Ridge, Idaho (see August 31, 1992), and Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993). Some predict that the Freemen standoff is the first step in a federal clampdown on the “patriot” movement, and call themselves ready for violence and even civil war. Other militia organizations are more cautious. The Tri-States Militia, a loose confederation of several militia organizations (see October 1995 and After), issues a press release criticizing the Freemen and saying they find it “insulting and offensive that people who call themselves members of the patriot community have combined their ‘patriotic’ activities with a clear attempt to defraud banking institutions and individual citizens through the use of phoney [sic] and/or money orders coupled with force and threats.” The Tri-States and other militia groups contrast the Freemen with their own, presumably “constitutional,” militias. (Later it is learned that the FBI had contacted a number of militia groups before they moved against the Freemen, apparently in an attempt to forestall any rash actions on the parts of the militias.) Montana Militia Reactions - The Montana Militia (sometimes called the Militia of Montana, or MOM—see January 1, 1994) is cautious, perhaps attempting to ascertain where public opinion is before taking a stand. MOM founders John and Randy Trochmann say the group has sent representatives to the scene to “monitor” the situation and talk to Freeman Dale Jacobi, who used to run a business near MOM’s Nixon, Montana, headquarters. The group issues a press release asking other militias to “stand down” and not come to Montana. John Trochmann even says: “I think the FBI has been handling it very patiently. I admire them for their patience. And they’ve had a tremendous amount of pressure from the public (see March 1996 and March 25, 1996), from the local law enforcement (see November 1995), and from their superiors in the FBI and the Justice Department. I think they’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and they’re doing the only thing they can do.” Other MOM members are less cautious. Militiaman Steve McNeil announces that he is leading a militia caravan to Jordan, Montana, in support of the Freemen; he is later arrested at the courtroom where two of the Freemen are being arraigned (see March 26, 1996) for violating his probation. Had McNeil managed to bring an actual caravan, he may have found himself in conflict with a cordon of some 30 local ranchers who have grouped together to stand up to any such militia operations. Local farmer Cecil Weeding later explains: “The militias will just pump more hot air into the Freemen and make it worse. There will be a clash if they get here. This country is sick and tired of that thing up there, and wants to get it over.” 'Operation Certain Venture' - Former MOM leader Norm Olson, perhaps looking for a way to re-enter the limelight after his recent disgrace (see Summer 1996 - June 1997), tells reporters that the FBI is seeking a way to massacre the Freemen with the complicity of the local and national media, and calls on militia organizations to converge on Montana. He even releases his plans for “Operation Certain Venture,” an unarmed convoy of food, mail, and other supplies (including what he calls “women’s necessities”) that he says will help prevent an FBI slaughter. April 19, the day of the Branch Davidian conflagration and the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), might be a good day to set forth, Olson suggests. Olson is joined by the Alabama-based Gadsden Minutemen, led by Jeff Randall; Randall issues a plea for “dedicated volunteers,” but notes that “arrest is possible, and the FBI could very well decide to shoot unarmed civilians.” Mike Kemp, founder of the Minutemen, promises “there won’t be another Waco unanswered. They are pushing us to a confrontation. If the shooting starts, it could get very ugly, very quickly.” Kemp says the entire issue is over a few debts, and says the situation can easily be handled in civil court. On CBS’s Face the Nation, Olson says that if Jordan “is going to be the place where the second American revolution finally culminates in war, then it’s good for a battlefield commander to be there to look at the logistics, to look at the needs, and to find out exactly what the situation is on the ground.” Other Opinions - Lawyer Gerry Spence, who represented Randy Weaver after the Ruby Ridge debacle, compliments the FBI on its restraint. “Patriot” leader James “Bo” Gritz, who helped negotiate Weaver’s surrender, implies that he is available to help negotiate a surrender for the Freemen as well, warning that “the longer these people stay within those walls, the more determined they get,” and even condoning the use of armed force against them if necessary. Samuel Sherwood of Idaho’s United States Militia Association calls the Freemen charlatans and rogues, and tells a reporter: “We’ve told everybody to stay away. These people aren’t what they are purporting to be. They are not the innocent victims of oppression.” Some members of Gritz’s “patriot” commune in Kediah, Idaho, a subgroup calling themselves the “Freemen Patriots,” go against their leader and issue claims of support for the Freemen, adding that the FBI standoff is a trap to capture more “patriots” and claiming that US Special Forces units have already been deployed at the scene. Some of the “Freemen Patriots” announce plans to hold a protest rally in Lewistown, Montana, on April 1 to support the Freemen, and ask all supporters to come sporting white ribbons. “We support the God-given right of our Freemen Brothers at Jordan, Montana, to be heard in a righteous constitutional court of law,” they proclaim. However, on April 1, only a few people actually show up. Lewistown police officer Bob Long describes the scene as “five or six guys out there at a RV park south of town. Right now, there are more newspeople in town than Freemen.” One extremist militia member, Bradley Glover, urges an array of violence to be mounted on behalf of the Freemen, but gets little reaction (see Late March 1996). Twos and Threes - However, a small number of militia members attempt to visit the compound, usually traveling in groups of two or three. Some are allowed to visit the Freemen, but most are turned away, particularly if they are armed. If they are carrying fuel, groceries, firearms, or ammunition, these supplies are confiscated. Oklahoma militia leader and fugitive Stewart Waterhouse, with another militia member, Barry Nelson, breaks through a roadblock and drives into the ranch to join the Freemen. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, accused of carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), are moved to a jail in Englewood, Colorado, in preparation for their upcoming trials. The two are flown into the Jefferson County Airport northwest of Denver in a Defense Department jet and then transferred to a helicopter, presumably for a flight to the federal prison in Englewood. Heavily armed guards seal the area as the two are transferred to the helicopter. [Associated Press, 3/31/1996; Fox News, 4/13/2005] McVeigh and Nichols will be tried in Denver (see February 20, 1996).

Stephen Jones, the lead defense lawyer for indicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), asks the court to provide him with classified documents from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency. The documents concern terrorist groups in Iraq, Iran, the Sudan, Great Britain, and Germany. In a sealed document not given to the prosecution, Jones tells Judge Richard P. Matsch that he has evidence from several confidential sources that the bombing was financed and carried out by a foreign terrorist group, and he wants the documents to prove that allegation. Prosecution member Beth Wilkinson calls the defense request “speculative and over-broad.” Federal officials say they do not believe the files will help the defense exonerate either McVeigh or his co-conspirator Terry Nichols, Wilkinson says, and adds that after April 21, 1995, when McVeigh was arrested (see April 21, 1995), the intelligence agencies had no role in the criminal investigation. “It is the government’s position that the bomb cost the defendants less than $1,000 to put together,” Wilkinson says. “They didn’t need a foreign government to finance the bombing.” Wilkinson says that the prosecution has already given Jones and Nichols’s lawyers an enormous amount of documents, including videotapes, photographs, laboratory reports, telephone and hotel records, and witness statements. Wilkinson says Jones’s attempts to get classified information are “effort[s] to investigate where the government stopped its investigation” of a possible overseas connection to the bombing. If the government were to allow Jones to review all its unrelated files, she says, “we would be here for years.” Matsch says he will read the request, but gives no indication as to how he will rule. Jones has also asked for documentation of accusations made by FBI forensic specialist Frederic Whitehurst, who has said that FBI scientists have not always handled evidence properly (see January 27, 1997). A Justice Department memo indicates that one of the FBI explosive experts who handled evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing case has been criticized by Whitehurst. Wilkinson says the government will turn over all pertinent information about Whitehurst’s complaints to the defense. [New York Times, 4/10/1996] Matsch will rule against the request. [Reuters, 4/30/1996]

ABC News airs a documentary on the accused Oklahoma City bombers (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), entitled Rage and Betrayal: The Lives of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. McVeigh, who is accused of actually detonating the bomb, gets the larger share of time. The documentary traces the family lives of both men, portraying them as unsuccessful products of broken homes and terming them “losers.” The documentary is a bit superficial and “glib,” says New York Times reviewer Walter Goodman. Another documentary, on Dateline NBC, is perhaps less superficial, Goodman writes, but host Bill Moyers presents a stronger point of view, arguing that the bombing was a political act fueled by extremists who hate the federal government. The NBC documentary spends less time on reviewing the facts of the case and more on Moyers’s position, and on the victims’ feelings, Goodman observes. [New York Times, 4/11/1996]

Larry Shoemake as a young man. [Source: Jackson Clarion-Ledger]Larry Shoemake, an Army veteran who has become a drifter, loner, and anti-government white supremacist, guns down eight African-Americans in a Jackson, Mississippi, restaurant before committing suicide. Shoemake will be compared to another ex-Army loner, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Like McVeigh, Shoemake is enamored of The Turner Diaries (see 1978), a novel depicting a white supremacist US revolution that ends in genocide against minority Americans. Blaming the Government, Minorities for His Failures - A 1961 high school graduate, Shoemake is a Vietnam veteran who had trouble adjusting to life after combat. He is well educated and once worked as a camera operator for the educational television station in Jackson. His father committed suicide in 1986. He repeatedly abused his first wife until she left him, and his next two marriages ended in divorce. He has trouble gaining and keeping employment; he did manage to secure a small role in the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, where he was shown carrying the bodies of three slain civil rights workers. Shoemake lived with his mother until she died in 1994. After her death, he began talking of suicide, telling relatives, “Unless I get killed by an automobile, I’ll choose my way out.” Friends and relatives will later say that after reading The Turner Diaries, he began blaming his failures on the federal government, African-Americans, and Jews. “It was like an eye-opener for him,” his third wife will later recall. “There was a distinct difference in him.” He began talking of moving to a white supremacist compound in the Ozarks. Instead, he remains in Jackson, stockpiling weapons and ammunition. One Dead, Eight Wounded - On the afternoon of April 12, Shoemake pulls his pickup truck behind an abandoned Po’Folks restaurant in Jackson. He pries open the door of the restaurant and unloads two assault rifles, a pump shotgun, a pistol, a .357 Ruger, over 20,000 rounds of ammunition, a gas mask, and a jug full of gasoline. He pours the gasoline in a perimeter around the building. Then he sets up a firing “nest,” and, using his AR-15 assault rifle, begins shooting into a predominantly African-American neighborhood. His first victim is D.Q. Holifield, who has come to Jackson to buy clothes for his son’s birthday party. Shoemake kills him in a barrage of gunfire. Shoemake then shoots his son Johnny in the arm and thigh. When paramedics respond, Shoemake rakes the ambulance with gunfire, forcing it to flee. Onlooker Cherie McElroy, attempting to flee, is shot in the shoulder; her mother is shot in the hip. The wounded McElroy manages to drive away. Pamela Berry, a reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, is shot in the neck; the bullet barely misses two arteries that, had either been nicked, would have ensured her death. Onlooker James Lawson is shot in the leg, as is Lawson’s cousin Darrien Jackson and another onlooker, Dorothy Grayson. All but Holifield survive the rampage. Shoemake continues his onslaught for 40 minutes, in the process setting the gasoline ablaze. As the flames begin to engulf the restaurant, Shoemake places the Ruger’s barrel against his temple and kills himself. Investigators later remove Shoemake’s charred body from the debris. Police later determine he fires at least 100 rounds before killing himself Police Find Arsenal, Clues - Police find 15 different makes of rifles in Shoemake’s home, along with two shotguns, military manuals, and another 20,000 rounds of ammunition; in all, Shoemake owns some $50,000 worth of weapons and materiel. No one is able to determine how he could afford such an arsenal. Police also find clues that indicate Shoemake may not have been operating on his own. A neighbor tells police of “funny looking fellows” coming and going from Shoemake’s house. “He’s a very weird neighbor,” says Dorothy Simpson, who lives near Shoemake. “He never spoke to anyone. He wasn’t very neighborly.” They find two walkie-talkies in the house. Inside, Shoemake has draped a Nazi flag across his bed, along with his mother’s Bible and a copy of Adolf Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf. A Confederate flag, a skull-and-crossbones flag, and a “shrine” to the Branch Davidians who died in Texas (see April 19, 1993) adorn the house. The house is full of scrawled notes, one reading: “I say: Annihilation or separation! Who is crazy, me or you? We will see.” Nearby lies a publication titled, “Separation or Annihilation,” written by William Pierce, the author of The Turner Diaries. Letter to a Friend - Authorities also find a letter written to a friend a month earlier, but never mailed. It reads as follows: “Hi, Kay. I’m baaaccck! Got my coffee and ready to ramble. We could call this, ‘The Final Ramblings of a Mad Man.‘… I’m sliding down and the farther I slide the faster I slide, and there’s no brush or tree limbs or rocks or anything I can grab and stop the slide and hold on to. I’ve been sliding for a long time and I’m getting close to the bottom and when I hit it will be a great relief to me. The sudden stop won’t hurt. [W]e have to act insanely to bring back sanity. I’m talking getting our guns and start pulling trigger on our enemies. Kill hundreds of thousands or more.… They deserve to die. Now.… Blacks is the problem. Its in their genes.… The bottom line is: Separation or annihilation. I think I’m about to run out of ink. That’s not the only thing that’s running out.… I must go now and explore another planet, because I don’t like this one anymore. Love, Larry.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 4/14/1996; Associated Press, 4/14/1996; Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/1999; Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 3/19/2010] Police spokesman Lee Vance says, “It appeared that he sort of expected that his house would be searched by authorities in the aftermath.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 4/14/1996]Healing - On April 19, after being released from the hospital, Pam Berry sits in a chair in front of the Southside Assembly of God Church auditorium, and briefly speaks to an assemblage consisting of the mayor of Jackson, police officers, paramedics, her parents, and others. The church, only a block from the Po’Folks restaurant, has bullet holes in its walls from Shoemake’s shooting spree. Berry’s father has told her that he worked with Shoemake and found him to be a nice person, “certainly no racist.” Berry tells the audience: “Don’t hate, and don’t take what happened to me and make it worse. Hate poisons everyone.… I’m glad that race wasn’t a consideration with the white nurse, the white paramedics, and the white doctors [who treated her wounds]. We shouldn’t let sicknesses like Shoemake spread to the rest of us. We can heal a city and we can heal each other. There are far more of us than there are of them.” [Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 3/19/2010]

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